Latest news with #DassaultFalcon
Wall Street Journal
04-08-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
How Flying on a Private Jet Became the No. 1 Marker of Real Wealth
When Maxx Chewning sold his sour-candy business to Hershey for $75.5 million, the first thing he did—before buying a Rolex or dream home—was jet his wife and six friends to Vail on a Dassault Falcon 900. They skipped security lines, zipped straight to the runway and seated themselves in leather recliners with gold accents in the wood-paneled cabin. The price tag for this adventure: $100,000.
Time of India
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Charter plane with Rajasthan CM on board lands at wrong runway in Phalodi
Representative picture (Source: Dassault Falcon) NEW DELHI: A charter aircraft flying Rajasthan CM Bhajan Lal Sharma from Delhi to Phalodi on last Thursday (July 31) landed on a 'wrong' airstrip at its destination. While the Falcon 2000 was to land at Phalodi Air Force Station, it landed at a civil airstrip of the city. Sources say the pilots realised their mistake and then took off from the civil airstrip to land the jet at the IAF station. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is probing this case and has taken the pilots off flying duty pending investigation. 'The CM flew from Delhi to Phalodi on July 31 at 3 pm. The aircraft landed at the civil airstrip in Phalodi. The pilots immediately took off from the wrong airstrip and then landed at the Phalodi IAF station, which was the scheduled airport for it and about 5 km away from the former. The CM alighted there and a couple of hours later flew the aircraft to Jaipur. The Falcon 2000 then flew back to Delhi the same night,' said people in the know. The charter company filed a voluntary report on the 'wrong airport landing incident' with the DGCA. The civil airstrip and the IAF station in Phalodi are about 5 km apart and both the facilities have similar geographical positioning. 'Both the runways have similar orientation and visual characteristics. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Here's The Estimated Cost of a 1-day Gutter Guards Installation HomeBuddy Click Here Undo The flight crew misidentified the intended runway during approach. Seemingly there was inadequate pre-flight briefing about the presence of two airfields in close vicinity. Pilots must get proper pre-flight briefing and that is something operators need to work on to ensure such things don't happen,' say sources. The Dassault Falcon 2000 is a French business jet that can carry 8-10 passengers with a range of upto 6,000 km. This case has raised concern as an aircraft supposed to land at the civil airstrip by mistake entering the restricted military airspace could have legal and safety consequences. 'The civil airstrip may not support the aircraft's weight category, compromising landing safety. Also, military-civil coordination may be lacking during such mis-landings, increasing response time for corrective action,' they add. The headquarters for the eponymous district, Phalodi is also called the 'salt city' due to the salt industry in Rin. Phalodi is in the buffer zone of Thar Desert and close to Bikaner, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Fred Smith built FedEx into the world's largest cargo airline
The rise of FedEx Corp. from a startup express carrier with a few aircraft to the largest air cargo airline in the world and facilitator of global commerce is one of the remarkable stories in American business history. Fred Smith, who founded and led the company as CEO for nearly 50 years, died Saturday at the age of 80. Former employees said he was a hands-on executive with an uncanny eye for making aircraft deals. 'He wasn't afraid to roll up his sleeves and get down in the details of things. Sometimes he would just leap over the chain of command to talk to the people he wanted to talk to. And he was famous for coming down, when the company was small, and watching the sort operation and talking to people,' said Steve Fortune, who heads his own aircraft investment consulting firm and worked in the 1980s as a FedEx analyst. 'He had an incredible memory, an incredible memory for names, for people and things.' FedEx currently has 710 aircraft, including nearly 400 planes it operates on trunk routes and 310 turboprop regional aircraft operated by contractors that feed FedEx hubs with shipments from smaller cities. The mainline fleet consists of Boeing 757s (large narrowbody freighter), Airbus A300-600 (small widebody jet), Boeing 767 (medium widebody), and large MD-11s and Boeing 777s. FedEx carries more cargo traffic than any other carrier, according to the International Air Transport Association. On its first night of service in 1973, FedEx Express delivered 186 packages from Memphis, Tennessee, to 25 cities with 14 Dassault Falcon business jets. Ron Anderson, who was vice president of aircraft acquisitions and sales at FedEx from 1974 to 1991 and is part-owner of Alpha Aviation Partners, provided a history of Smith's fleet strategy on the Time on Wing podcast in 2023. 'Fred Smith knows more about the aircraft market than anyone in the world today,' Anderson said at the time. Smith made one of last public appearances last month at the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading freighter forum in Miami. In the early days, the FedEx offices at Memphis airport resembled quonset huts, the company was losing $1 million a month, and there were only 400 employees. Today, the company employs more than 500,000 people around the world, connects more than 220 countries and territories, and moves nearly $2 trillion in goods annually and more than 17 million shipments per day. Smith acquired the Dassault Falcon aircraft from Pan Am Airlines, which was the U.S. distributor of the French-made aircraft and ordered many for its new executive jet business. By the early 1970s, Pan Am changed its mind and began selling off the twin-engine planes. Smith initially bought 23 Falcons parked in the desert, but had to first convince American businessman and TransWorldAirlines (TWA) director Lester Crown to guarantee a loan to buy the planes and have them modified with a large cargo door, according to Anderson's telling. 'The next year the value of the planes doubled with demand for corporate airplanes and no inventory, so the equity in those 23 planes helped start FedEx. We were opening three stations per week, which required someone to go negotiate an operating agreement with an airport and find a facility. So two of us flew around on a Piper Aero going to different airports,' he said. Smith began looking for a plane to replace the Falcon and ordered 25 CL600s from Canadair in 1976. But when Congress deregulated the aviation industry and allowed planes with more than 7,5000 pounds of capacity, Smith lost interest in the CL600s and moved to get the Boeing 727. FedEx agreed to buy five of CL600s, but eventually sold four of them and made the fifth a corporate jet for the company's executive team. FedEx bought six Boeing 727-100s from United Airlines and two from LAN Chile in South America, followed by deals with United for seven additional aircraft and with Eastern Airlines for 14 aircraft, Anderson told the 'Time on Wing' hosts. 'The economics were huge for us. The bigger an aircraft the lower the cost per pound. The yields with the Falcons carrying 6,000 pounds were fine, we made money. But the amount of money we could make with the larger airplane was exponential to us,' he said. FedEx soon began to get competition. In the mid-1970s, Emery Air Freight, an airfreight forwarder, began leasing its own cargo planes for domestic freight transport. In 1984, UPS launched its own airline to augment its ground parcel delivery service. Smith and his executives wanted a bigger plane to support shipping demand on key routes and opted for the DC-10 over the Boeing 747-200. 'Fred's concern was if you could fill the 747 the economics worked, but if you didn't fill it the economics would kill you compared to the DC-10,' said Anderson. Continental Airlines bought eight DC-10-10s with freight doors so it could be eligible to participate in the military's Civil Reserve Air Fleet, but never used the planes as freighters. FedEx moved in and negotiated to buy four of the planes and put them on domestic routes, the former FedEx executive said. Fed Ex then bought 11 DC-10-30s. 'The problem was the plane had an elevator to move the galleys up and down. In order to turn them into a full freighter you had to remove those galleys. I negotiated a deal with Transamerica while [Smith] was golfing at Pebble Beach. They got a supplemental type certificate [from the FAA] to remove the elevator and within three months we had those planes in the fleet' FedEx ended up buying eight more DC-10-30s from World Airways. 'There's no aircraft we didn't look at as a potential freighter,' Anderson said. When FedEx bought Flying Tiger Line in 1988 it had about a dozen DC-8s. Flying Tigers had a tight relationship with UPS, which also operated the DC-8, so FedEx sold six of the aircraft to UPS and the rest to other operators. By 1980, FedEx had sold 30 of the 32 remaining Dassault Falcons in the fleet. With little initial interest, FedEx painted one plane camouflage, hung fake missiles on it to resemble a Dassault fighter jet, reinstalled the passenger interior and took it to the Paris Air Show. It sold 10 aircraft at the show, including to the Portuguese and Venezuelan air forces. Later, Flight Refueling in Bournemouth, England, took 10 Falcons and converted them into target-towing vehicles for use in training fighter pilots. Many of the Falcons are still flying, according to Anderson. One, named after Smith's daughter Wendy, went to the Smithsonian Museum. Another plane, named after second daughter Lauren, was supposed to be donated to the FedEx museum in Memphis. 'But we had sold it, but I couldn't tell Fred Smith that. So we re-registered one of the unsold planes as that one,' Anderson recalled. In 1982, Anderson helped Smith set up Federal Express Aviation Services. They hired a group of software engineers to create a database for compiling data on aircraft trading activity. The unit published monthly data about the global airfleet and listings of available aircraft, which gave FedEx a leg up on deals. It also sold the data to other parties. Smith wanted to know more about the aircraft they were purchasing, so Anderson hired some software engineers and aviation professionals to create a database on aircraft trading activity. The unit was called Federal Express Aviation Services. Fortune played a key role managing the data project, which included time-consuming retrieval of aircraft bill of sales from microfiche files at the Federal Aviation Administration and purchasing transaction data from a small Swedish company with spotters around the world. The team gradually built a list of all commercial aircraft in the world and their transaction history. The data gave FedEx a leg up on deals, according to Anderson and Fortune. FedEx published the data each month and sold portions of it to other customers. FedEx eventually determined the unit wasn't core to its business and sold it. The database was subsequently bought by Aviation Week, Fortune said. Anderson left FedEx to start an aircraft brokerage business called Intrepid Aviation. Smith invested in the company with the idea that the company would buy passenger planes that would make good candidates for freighter conversion at a later time. Anderson said he eventually bought out Smith to avoid potential conflicts of interest. As with any successful entrepreneur, Smith experienced failures along with the great success. In 1984, FedEx launched Zapmail, which used fax machines to expedite the delivery of documents at a time when telex machines were in fashion and fax machines weren't ubiquitous yet. FedEx heavily invested in fax machines from NEC Corp. in Japan with the idea that people would deliver a document to a FedEx office for transmission to a FedEx office in another city where the recipient would pick it up. For high-volume users FedEx also installed Zapmailer fax machines on the premises. The FedEx strategy was driven by an expectation that customers would pay a premium to have their documents delivered in hours instead of overnight, according to news accounts. FedEx officials also believed that by migrating document traffic from trucks and aircraft, they could significantly reduce transportation costs and then officer discounted services to increase volumes and margins. 'Needless to say, it was not a big success,' Fortune said, as companies and individuals bought fax machines of their own as the cost came down. Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch. RELATED READING: FedEx names new chairman to replace founder Fred Smith Fred Smith, FedEx founder and parcel industry pioneer, dies at 80 The post How Fred Smith built FedEx into the world's largest cargo airline appeared first on FreightWaves. 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New Straits Times
26-05-2025
- Business
- New Straits Times
Aircraft giant Titan launches operations in Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR: Global aircraft management company, Titan Aviation has officially launched its operations in Malaysia. In a statement today, the United States (US) and Dubai-headquartered company aims to deliver its renowned operational excellence and industry-leading safety standards to aircraft owners and high-net-worth individuals seeking private aviation solutions. "The addition of Malaysia as a regional hub enhances the company's ability to offer aviation services in Southeast Asia's second-largest aviation hub that continues to grow as a business and tourism centre," it said. Its managing director, Captain Sakeer Sheik said Malaysia is a critical gateway in Southeast Asia—not just geographically, but in terms of demand for bespoke, trustworthy private aviation services. "Our presence here allows us to support aircraft owners, charter clients, and business travellers with unmatched responsiveness, technical depth, and operational transparency," he said. Sakeer noted that the Malaysian government and its local authorities are welcoming of new players in the country to offer a variety of aviation services adhering to global standards. Titan Aviation also said the new Malaysian base will offer a wide range of services, including aircraft management, private jet chartering, aircraft sales and acquisition, Continuous Airworthiness Maintenance Organisation (CAMO) and technical services, as well as staffing solutions. It also offers Malaysian clients preferential insurance terms, faster claims and lower premiums through its group fleet coverage. "Whether it's managing a Gulfstream for a Malaysian corporate or arranging a last-minute charter to Hong Kong or Jakarta, our team here is equipped and empowered to deliver," added Sakeer. Founded in 2004, Titan Aviation manages a growing fleet of over 30 aircraft and helicopters globally—including Gulfstream jets and the Dassault Falcon—and operates across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Far East Asia, including Indonesia, Cambodia, Singapore, and India.
Epoch Times
24-04-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
General Dynamics Profits Jet Higher on Sales of Business Aircraft
General Dynamics' profits jumped more than 27 percent in the first quarter as the company's aerospace business is expected to begin making deliveries of its new long-range executive jet later this summer. Based in Reston, Virginia, the aerospace and military contractor provides a range of products and services for the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies, as well as private sector and commercial customers worldwide. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts on April 23, General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic said the company's four business segments saw increases in earnings and revenue compared to a year ago. She noted the company's growth and strong performance in the defense and aerospace sectors, which saw a 50 percent increase in aircraft deliveries. 'This business has become a real jewel. In summary, the aerospace team has had a good quarter,' Novakovic said of the company's Gulfstream subsidiary and jet aviation business. During the quarter, Gulfstream delivered 36 business jets to customers worldwide, including 13 of its new ultra-large-cabin G700 aircraft that can carry up to 19 passengers. A year ago, Gulfstream delivered its first G700 to customers, providing the company with a new flagship executive jet to rival Bombardier's Global 7500 and Dassault Falcon's new 10X entry. Last week, Gulfstream also announced that the company's new G800 was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. Produced at the Savannah, Georgia, production facility, the G800 is billed as the world's longest-range business jet, capable of traveling over 8,200 nautical miles (9,400 miles) at speeds nearing Mach 0.935. Related Stories 4/23/2025 4/22/2025 Gulfstream's fleet of executive business aircraft also includes the G400, G500, G600, and G650. The latter recently recorded the farthest and fastest flight in business aviation history, traveling from Singapore to Tucson, Arizona, a distance of about 9,200 miles, in just over 15 hours, and completed production in February. Since then, the new executive jet entry has moved to the company's completion center in Appleton, Wisconsin, where the first G650 will be delivered to the first customer later this year. During the conference call, Novakovic also highlighted General Dynamics' position as one of the nation's top prime defense contractors, providing a full spectrum of technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning services and products to military, intelligence, and federal civilian customers. Under the company's combat and marine subsidiaries, the prime defense contractor General Dynamics' brand-name products for the U.S. military include the M1 Abrams tank, Virginia-Class submarines, and Stryker anti-tank missiles and armored vehicles used by Ukraine in the ongoing war with Russia. 'Demand for combat system products continues to be robust, with particular strength in Europe,' said Novakovic, citing 'the heightened threat environment' globally. The General Dynamics chief executive said that in addition to recent contracts exceeding $1 billion to supply the U.S. Army with battlefront combat vehicles, which Ukrainian soldiers are now using against Russian infantry, the company is also working with the Pentagon to accelerate the modernization of the Abrams M-1 tank. In late 2023, the U.S. Army first After earlier upgrades in 2018, the new Army tank is considered the world's most lethal battlefield tank. Army officials have said publicly that the latest version will be updated with the latest modular systems, allowing quicker technological upgrades and requiring fewer resources. 'We are rapidly increasing munitions capacity and production with the opening of our projectile facility in Texas and our load, assembly, and pack facility in Arkansas,' Novakovic confirmed. 'All in all, combat had a solid quarter and is off to a good start for the year.' General Dynamics On a company-wide basis, orders in the quarter totaled $10.2 billion, and backlog at the end of the quarter was $88.7 billion. As the Trump administration and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) move forward with In response to analyst questions about the impact of Trump administration tariffs, trade policy, and possible DOGE and Department of Defense budget cuts on company operations, the General Dynamics CEO said the company preferred to hold comments until more information is available. 'If I were more specific, I would be wrong. I am just really sharing how we see it from our foxhole,' said Novakovic. 'Rumors are rampant, and I just want to see what the [Trump] budget shows.' Taking a page from a growing number of Fortune 500 companies, Novakovic said General Dynamics would not revise or update its yearly financial forecast. Earlier in January, the company provided earnings per share guidance of $14.75 billion to $14.85 billion for the first quarter, compared to the consensus earnings per share estimate of $13.7 billion. In Wednesday's New York Stock Exchange session, General Dynamics' shares settled at $265.53, down $9.27 or 3.3 percent.
