Jeffrey Borer, former owner of defunct charter operator XtraJet, and Arvel Reeves, previous owner of one-timeaircraft services firm Executive Aviation Logistics, admitted guilt in a plea bargain on federal charges of secretly videotaping entertainer Michael Jackson and his attorney while they were flying aboard a chartered Gulfstream IISP on Nov. 20, 2003.
Law
September 20, 2006 - 9:50am
The sentence from a Westchester County, N.Y. judge is “time served” (about nine months) for the drunk young man who took a Cessna 172 for a joyride last June from Danbury Airport, in Connecticut, landing at Westchester County Airport at 4:30 a.m. Philippe Patricio, 21, still faces airport security charges in Danbury.
September 20, 2006 - 7:05am
Aircraft buyers and sellers, aviation attorneys, bankers and other lenders, brokers, aircraft and title insurance agents and everyone else involved in aircraft transactions are climbing a steep learning curve in their collective attempt to comply with the requirements of a new international aircraft registry that opened for business on March 1.
September 20, 2006 - 4:45am
Million Air franchise Regent Aviation in Saint Paul, Minn., bought Rochester Aviation at Minnesota Rochester International Airport and renamed the FBO Regent Aviation. Steve Birdseye is general manager of the new Regent Aviation FBO in Rochester.
September 19, 2006 - 5:01am
A former Comair flight attendant faces 10 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of setting fire to one of the airline’s Bombardier CRJs, forcing it to make an emergency landing in Rome, Ga.
September 15, 2006 - 7:37am
Mesaba Airlines last month filed a new bankruptcy court petition to void its contracts with its pilots, mechanics and flight attendants, only three weeks after Judge Gregory Kishel ruled that the airline did not meet all the conditions needed to unilaterally impose a 19.4-percent cut in payroll costs.
September 15, 2006 - 6:42am
Former Flight Options pilot Franklin Rodriguez, 36, last month pleaded guilty in federal court to charges that in April last year, while in the Air National Guard, he flew a C-5A into the U.S. with some 300,000 Ecstasy pills aboard. As part of his plea, Rodriguez forfeits $725,000 in cash found in his apartment. He also faces 20 years in prison.
September 15, 2006 - 5:17am
The lawsuit in which former Sino Swearingen president and CEO Carl Chen is suing the company for breach of contract and other alleged wrongdoings is scheduled to go to trial January 8 next year. Former senior v-p of marketing Gene Comfort has filed similar wrongful termination charges against the company.
September 14, 2006 - 6:20am
The FAA has referred its civil penalty case against Platinum Jet Management to the U.S. Attorney General in the office of the Department of Justice for further action. Platinum Jet Management and the FAA last month apparently failed to reach a compromise agreement on the agency’s proposed July 2005 $1.86 million civil penalty against the company for allegedly operating numerous for-hire flights without an operating certificate.
September 14, 2006 - 6:11am
The FAA late last month adopted a 2004 notice of proposed rulemaking amending airman medical standards so that a refusal to submit to a required drug or alcohol test carries the same penalty as failure of a test–revocation or disqualification from holding an airman medical certificate. The same penalty awaits a pilot with an alcohol test result of an alcohol concentration of 0.04 or greater in a blood or breath specimen.
