UD Accepts 2 G1000's

Had a pretty fun day "off" form work yesterday. I worked in the morning, but we're usually done by 7am, so its basically like having the day free. I traded my afternoon shift so I could fly down to Independence, KS with the chair of the UD Aviation Department, our aviation maintenance manager, and a flight instructor from UD. the reason for our mission was to accept (close/beggining of delivery) two new Skyhawks with Garmin G1000 Avionics. These are glass cockpit aircraft as opposed to having the old steamgauge instruments. Essentially they are two computer screens that display all the information you need to fly including flight instruments, traffic, terrain, and weather. The new systems increase a pilot's situational awareness in all phases of flight. We're really excited to finally have these at UD. Once we arrived in Independence, we were treated to a delicious buffet lunch by Cessna. Afterwards we went with two of their pilots on an acceptance flight to test the new Skyhawks for functionality of all their systems. We then signed some paperwork and headed back to Dubuque in the Navajo (UD plane). The flight instructor that went along stayed for training and will bring back one of the planes on Thursday night. The other Skyhawk will be flown up to Dubuque over the weekend by two of Cessna's training pilots. 6 UD instructors will have training next week in Dubuque on the systems and operation of these new G1000's. UD will take delivery of three more Skyhawks with G1000's on the 6th of August.

Today was an interesting morning at the airport. Upon inspection of the rear cargo compartment, I found that one of the access panels was damaged and loose. I reported to the Captain and First Officer and after calling maintenence control, it was determined that we would have to wait for an engineer to draw up a schematic of how to properly secure the pannel and then have someone from maintenence on Dubuque's field to perform the maintenence. This led to a delay which forced us to rebook passengers and retag all their bags for the new connections they would have to take. Our 6:50AM departure finally left at 10:01AM. Needless to say the passengers were pretty unhappy about getting to their destinations hours past due. We did the best we could, and I think everyone working today realized that it was out of our control, so we didn't have anyone freakout or break down. Other than that everything is going well.