MUSTANG FERRY ENDS

This article appears on my regular blog page that can be accessed here.

In this post, I will import more pictures of my stop over in Egypt on the ferry.

MUSTANG FERRY GREENLAND PHOTOS

Before the Greenland pictures, here are some more of the Mustang in Wichita at the Cessna Service Center, just before we started on the ferry:





Now for pictures of Goose Bay with the Dash 8 turboprop and leaving Goose Bay and the rest of the pictures are Greenland shots:

Mustang ferry

I have just arrived in Singapore with a brand new Cessna Citation Mustang, serial number 0070. I have written about the acceptance of the Aircraft and now doing a series, with pictures, of the ferry flight of the Aircraft and can find that story here.

Airplane delivered

I wrote about the new Citation Mustang delivery and acceptance, the first one for SEAJET Singapore. That story can be found here

VISITING CESSNA-LINK

I wrote about visiting Cessna facility to look up my new Citation Mustang. That story can be found here.

Singapore Air Show 2008

Singapore Air Show is being held for the first time, this year. The air show that was organized in previous years was by a different organization and was called the Asian Aerospace Expo. That event has now moved to Hong Kong. The show was from the 19th of Feb to the 22nd, it is the last day today and a public day. The two days of the weekend were for public days and judging from the sheer volume, it is a hit with the public, attracting over 40,000 people per day. The trade days were for delegates, customers (such as myself), sellers, exhibitors and so on.

(Selvam, me, representatives for Cessna in this region Ms Chong and Dato Lee)

Here are some positive things to say about the air show. Firstly, the venue is great, plenty of space, a purpose-built indoor exhibition space, huge by any standards and well organized. The tarmac area is more than adequate. The show is very well connected by MRT/Bus, Taxis, own transport and so on.

(Fighters and bombers made their presence felt as always)


Here are some not so positive things to say about it. This show was really small compared to Dubai. At least it seemed that way. There were for sure, a lot less Aircraft on static display. Vast area of the tarmac was absolutely empty. Dubai was leaps and bounds bigger and better in terms of deals and sales concluded. However, Dubai was poorly connected, no buses running round the clock during the show, severe shortage of taxis and really expensive taxis. The exhibition hall in Dubai and the layout was confusing unlike Singapore. Dubai had great volume and poor organization. Singapore had poor volume and great organization. So there.

(The Cessna 400 single engine seen from the cockpit of the Citation Sovereign)

I had promised all, in my last blog post, that I'd post pictures, so here they are. The Singapore Air Show for me was a good one. I had plenty of work with Cessna Aircraft. They are the manufacturers of the Citation Mustang Jet and as mentioned earlier, my new company will acquire two this year. One Aircraft is due in late March and I had meetings related to this at the show.


(Citation Sovereign outside and with me inside)


Cessna also reported large orders from Indian promoted Singapore operator BJet. The TATAs' have a stake in it and some jets are likely to be based out of Seletar Airport here. A flight school in India ordered a large number of piston engine Cessna 172 training Aircraft and Cessna reported that single engine piston Aircraft sales were at record levels this past year and looking good for this year as well. The all-new Cessna Columbus also made the news here. It is a new large Cabin concept Jet to be designed and built by Cessna. This is a product many Cessna faithful were looking for, from a long time. The largest they had ever built is the hugely successful Citation X, the World's fastest biz jet. Let's hope the Columbus gets off the drawing board and into production real soon. Other maufacturers such as Gulfstream had brought in their G150, 200, 450 and 550 large executive jets. Here's a picture of a G450 with the clergy also evaluating the Gulfstream line and why not?


Falcon had brought in their new Falcon 7X whose pictures I have in my Dubai Air Show article. Embraer had their Legacy 600 and Eclipse had their Eclipse 500 VLJ, again these photos also appear in the Dubai Air Show. As in the recent past, Indians almost dominated the show in numbers, or at least seemed like it. India had a pavillion with the same old H.A.L and defence exhibits. Chinese and Indonesian operators also made their presence felt, ordering large number of transport Aircraft.


(The Airbus A380 super jumbo)


The flying displays were the usual standard that one gets to see at every air show. The Republic of Singapore Air Show put up a grand display with their F-16 aerobatic team. The Airbus A380 made another appearance, on the ground as well as in the air. As always it's great fun to see this big bird make fantabulous displays in slow flight. The show ends this afternoon and I'm looking forward to the next one in two years time. A new air show is planned to be organized in Hyderabad, India this year. Farnborough U.K. has announced that it will partner that event. The chances of me being there with one of my Mustang jets on display, is very high. See me at the show, October of 2008.

MYSORE AIRPORT – LATEST NEWS AND UPDATE

In December 2005 – two years ago, I wrote about the plan that the Airport Authority of India was making, to construct a regular airport in Mysore, India, my home town. Later on in April and May 2006 I followed up this story and made critical comments on how the airport project was making sound bites of the wrong kind and how the local media wasn’t getting it right either. As promised in my blog of April 2006, I am updating the news in my new blog that I use for writing only on aviation and aviation related matters.

I am late in updating news and that has been due to a combination of the fact that the much announced and much awaited (20 years or more in the waiting!) project ran into troubles from the start and also because I could not gather any information on the progress, if there was any, of the project because I was away overseas for all this time and no news or data was available on the internet about this airport. If you the reader attempt to research this airport on the internet, you’ll just come up with links to my blog and articles I had written last year on other online aviation magazines.

Well, I’m glad that this time I made it to Mysore on a very brief trip and managed to go to the construction site to see for myself what was going on. I had met the Airport Director of the Bangalore International Airport before heading down to Mysore and had a fair idea of how things had progressed in the time I was gone and since the days of my first writing on the subject two years ago. The Director had been candid about the problems they had faced and the commitment they had for the project that kept it going nevertheless.

(The present "terminal")

Here are some pictures of the Airport, a Second World War surplus airfield, with a grass strip that was once used to fly DC-3 Aircraft and trainer Aircraft such as the Famous biplane the Tiger Moth. These pictures at least give the impression of activity going on at the Mysore Airport. What I saw while I was there seemed impressive, truck loads of material was seen arriving every five minutes, material that would be used at the site. The main runway to cater initially for ATR-72 type Aircraft (68 passengers) is being completed. This will be extended in the second phase to accommodate larger Aircraft such as the Airbus A320/Boeing B737 types. When it gets done in the first phase, it will be a great place for companies to set up light Aircraft/corporate Aircraft maintenance and a flight school and the latter seems to be an idea that may be already in the pipeline, from an undisclosed private party.

(Path from the tarmac area towards the old terminal building)

What I could see is that their first goal of laying the runway was almost over and this is to be followed up by putting in the taxi ways, tarmac area and the airport terminal building. What you see in this picture is the original old “terminal” building that used to be operational even 20 years ago when Vayudhoot (a commuter airline those days) operated a Dornier 228 to and from Mysore using the grass runway. The present estimate for completion of the project is October of 2008 and the officials are confident of meeting this deadline. I’m planning on a trip out to Mysore Airport again sometime in May/June of next year. I’ll update the news on the developments and I’ll encourage Mysoreans to keep their fingers crossed in the meantime and hope that the Airport will be opened soon; it will bring a sigh of relief to the locals.

(construction equipment working on the main runway)


Happy Holidays and Happy 2008 to all, may everything that you aspire for, come true next year. Cheers.