Word: piaggio
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With their swept-back wings, forward-mounted canards, or stabilizers, and pusher propellers, they look a little as if they should be moving through the air tailfirst. But the two new designs -- Beech Aircraft's Starship and Rinaldo Piaggio's P. 180 Avanti -- are very much forward-looking pieces of machinery. Using advanced technology to deliver high performance and good fuel efficiency, they could dictate the shape of small transport aircraft in the coming years...
Last week the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announced that Beech, based in Wichita, had met Government standards for airworthiness with its Starship, and granted "type certification," clearing the way for deliveries to customers by next spring. Piaggio, which has headquarters in Genoa, Italy, hopes to receive U.S. certification for its Avanti model by the end of the year. Both planes, each seating seven to ten passengers, are expected to be warmly welcomed in the corporate market. Says Henry Ogrodzinski, communications director of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association: "It looks like ((both firms)) have come up with a winner...
...slow-speed flight -- it was highly resistant to stalls -- it proved too unstable at high speeds, and was eventually abandoned in favor of aircraft with stabilizers fixed to their tails. Now, with computers available to design planes and with fly-by-wire controls to help steer them, Beech and ) Piaggio have revived the original concept...
...reigning Agnellis are as dissimilar in style as an 850 Sport Spider and a 128 family sedan. The 51-year-old Gianni, jet-setting celebrity and voluble charmer, is characteristically energetic and impatient. By contrast, Umberto so detests partygoing that friends say his marriage to Antonella Piaggio, whose family makes Vespa motor scooters, broke up three years ago partly because of her active social life. To relax, Umberto spends weekends sailing off the Sardinian coast, where he keeps a home, often with Girl Friend Allegra Caracciolo di Castagneto, a first cousin of Gianni's wife...
Some $2,500,000 worth of improvements have transformed the 1,600-ton 325-foot ship into a floating Elysium. Capable of 22 knots, mounting an amphibian Piaggio aircraft plus a landing craft, the yacht boasts a black-sweatered crew of 50 ("More than it needs to run a 40,000-ton tanker," says Onassis), two chefs, 42 extension phones, a bathtub that glitters with mosaic dolphins and flying fish and was copied from King Minos' palace at Knossos, and a swimming pool big enough to hold a Kennedy sloop...