Private Charter Flights Up at London Oxford, ASG will release Asia Pacific fleet report at ABACE, Dassault Falcon Services completes C-check on Falcon 7X

London Oxford Airport has reported a 7.5 per cent increase in private charter flights over the 12-month period between February 2014 and February 2015.

The numbers peaked between September 2014 and February 2015, where monthly movements grew by an average of 20 per cent, with September showing an overall growth of 28 per cent.

London Oxford reports more flights from US, Canada and CIS countries, as well as aircraft arriving from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.

Asian Sky Group (ASG) will release its 2014 Asian Pacific Business Jet Fleet Report at ABACE 2015.

The report will be released at a press conference on 14 April in Shanghai.

It will provide details of the business jet fleet in the Asia Pacific region, including Japan, Korea, Mongolia, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Phillipines, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Mexico’s Pacific coast is in the news of late. That’s especially true of the Costalegre, the expanse of beaches, capes and bays between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. Long the favorite of the private jet set, it’s about to become a bit more accessible — in an exclusive way that is.

A new Costalegre airport is in the works, making it much easier to reach the region. At the moment, visitors flying commercial must arrive either at Puerto Vallarta or Manzanillo. Neither is particularly convenient.

Dassault Falcon Service (DFS), a Dassault Aviation company-owned service center, recently completed an initial C-check on an in-service Falcon 7X, preparing the way for the start of routine overhauls.

C-checks are the largest scheduled maintenance events on the Falcon 7X and are due every eight years or every 4,000 cycles, whichever comes first. Although the fleet leaders on the very long range trijet, which was introduced onto the market in 2007, have not quite reached this limit, it was decided to move up the first inspection at DFS slightly to demonstrate and optimize the quality of the Falcon 7X overhaul process.  A second DFS 7X visit, including a full cabin renovation and an installation of an EVS in addition to overhaul work, is already underway with others scheduled to follow by midyear.

The aircraft involved in the initial C-check is seven years old and has flown 1,340 cycles. The inspection, carried out at DFS’s Paris/Le Bourget facility, also entailed bringing the aircraft up to the latest operating standard, renovating the interior, repainting the exterior and installing a satcom unit and high speed wifi system.