Texas-based married pilots, Jim and Betsey Frost, are racking up an extraordinary number of hours on their new baby, the first Phenom 100 to be delivered.
Since taking possession of the N82DU in Fort Lauderdale on 31 December, they have logged 150h, their latest adventure being a seven-leg, three-day marathon flight from Houston to Geneva to show off their Brazilian-built aircraft on static display here.
The couple, aided by Sergio Leite, a Fort Lauderdale-based private jet captain on contract to Embraer, enlisted the services of Prague-based ABS Jets, a partner company to Universal Weather and Aviation, for the flight planning work.
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After a steady stream of phone calls, emails and internet tag-ups with ABS over a 10-day period for the flight planning, the Frosts launched out on the trip with Leite along in the four-seat cabin on 7 May. The trio made stops in Dallas, Syracuse, Goose Bay, Iqaluit, Keflavik and Wick in Scotland before arriving in Geneva on 9 May. Legs were flown with either Jim or Betsey in the left seat, with the longest recorded segment of 2,368km (1,280nm), a distance greater than the aircraft's 2,179km IFR range, thanks to favourable winds on that leg.
Enabling the trip in part was an amenity that played a large part in the Frost's buying an Embraer rather than a Cessna Citation Mustang -the Phenom's aft-cabin private lavatory. "I have a wife and two daughters," says Jim Frost.
The hopscotch route to Ebace has apparently whetted their appetite for more and grander adventures. The couple, who named their aircraft after the year they both graduated from Duke University, told Flight Evening News that they are planning an around-the-world flight in the Phenom in fall 2010.
Source: Flight Daily News
