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Airborne 03.23.17: Citation Longitude Update, Lawn-Chair Balloonacy, Yuneec


Also: Sea Vixen, FAA-UAS Symposium, Boeing Layoffs, Evada Aircraft, OneWeb, Legacy 450, MS A/C Sale The third aircraft in the Cessna Citation Longitude flight test program recently completed its first flight. Test pilots Corey Eckhart and UJ Pesonen, along with flight test engineer Mike Bradfield, successfully tested various systems throughout the one-hour and 40-minute flight. The aircraft will be used in the program for avionics and systems development, as well as collecting flight simulator data. The company has started assembly line flow in the company’s east campus Plant IV manufacturing facility, with the first four production Longitude aircraft currently in progress. In July of 2015, Calgary, Canada business owner Daniel Boria tied 100 industrial-grade helium balloons to a lawn chair and took off over the city in a stunt that he said was intended to promote his cleaning business. Last week, however, provincial court Judge Bruce Fraser assessed a hefty fine against Boria, calling the stunt "dumb and dangerous" and "unconscionably stupid." Boria pleaded guilty in December to charges of dangerous operation of an aircraft. In an agreement worked out with prosecutors, he will pay a $5,000 direct fine and contribute $20,000 to the charity of his choice, according to the report. Here’s proof positive that bad times can come to just about anyone... including a major high-flyer in the hobby drone market. An undisclosed number of employees of Yuneec USA will be losing their jobs as confirmed by the company late last week. The company issued a statement saying it was planning to "scale back our business structure to secure a balance between operational costs and revenue. We concluded that we upsized operations faster than our growth required." All this -- and MORE in today's episode of Airborne!!!


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