Had N1 a Citation Sovereign fly both of our approaches today (SMQ 2700') https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a00001

I used to work on N1 when it was a G-IV in the FAA hangar at DCA.

N1 is now registered to TENAX AEROSPACE. Is this a lease to the FAA for Flight Inspection?

Brian H?

I remember N1 when it was at Savannah a few times. It looks like they sold it recently with about 14,450 hours on the airframe. They certainly got their $$ out of it. However, a Soverign is less expensive to operate, so it doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t get a new or used G-400 or G-500.

I wonder, as well, if that Soverign is dry leased to the FAA of if they farmed out the flight check work to a contractor.

Yes - leased for the primary transportation duty just like the Ni Gulfstream that you were acquainted with Terry.

Now that we all fall under Flight Program Operations (FPO) - an umbrella for all of the different FAA flight program operations that used to be stove piped - we are one big happy family now.

I personally started flying some of the C90s that are mainly based out of Alliance Fort Worth (KAFW) that are primarily used to train the ASIs which were specifically modified to work on the VORMON project, but like the Sovereign now - are sometimes tasked with NON-PANEL flight inspection duties. Non-panel meaning that they are NOT collecting signals in space that require the mission specialist to analyze for proper functioning and meeting the required tolerances.

N1 does some non-panel flight inspection with people trained in the non-panel inspections when not flying on its' main mission which is still transportation of the Administrator/NTSB go-teams and other tasking through the chain of command.

Conversely - sometimes you might see one of our dedicated flight inspection Challengers now flying around the Homeland Security/TSA teams for example.

Luckily I've been able to avoid that type of flying and am still firmly ensconced in the world of straight (and solely) flight inspection ; though many years ago there was talk of taking me off an itinerary and flying the Administrator down to tour some flooding in TX after one of the big hurricanes quite a few years back. When I told the bosses that I would love a few hours to chat with the big boss they came up with another plan and used on of the Lear60s instead

Thanks Brian. What are they actually checking on non-Panel inspections? For rwy 12 at SMQ they joined the approach just before the FAF, for 30 they joined the approach path only a few hundred feet before the runway.

Obstacle evaluations and other surveillance items like the airfield lighting or lights that support the SIAP, communications, charting errors, etc....