After more than seven years of behind-the-scenes negotiation, customs service for international flights will return to Van Nuys Airport in the next month. U.S. Customs and Border Protection will start out with a single customs agent operating from a space at Signature Flight Support on the west side of the airport and then may add a second agent if demand increases. Having a customs officer at the San Fernando Valley airfield means a cost savings for aircraft operators flying in from international destinations. They will no longer have to stop at Los Angeles International Airport or another port-of-entry to clear customs before continuing on to Van Nuys. The operators will pay a sliding user fee for the customs check. Eric Hill, area director for Signature at Van Nuys, said even just a brief stop for customs clearance adds up with taxi time, maintenance and stopping and then starting a jet engine. “The cost of the user fee is significantly less than the cost to the aircraft to make a secondary stop somewhere else,” Hill said, adding that details of the sliding fee were still being worked out. The agent will be available from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Thursday through Monday. An on-call agent would be available at an over-time rate for any flights arriving at other times, Hill said. Van Nuys has been without customs agents since 2006, when they were pulled from there and Burbank Bob Hope Airport for re-assignment elsewhere. The following year officials from the airport, its main tenants, and Los Angeles World Airports began discussions with Customs and Border Protection to get them back. In order for that to happen, the federal agency required a separate facility for conducting the clearances. Van Nuys Airport Manager Jess Romo said the airport offered up five options, with Signature as the best because it already had an existing building available. “Secondarily it is midfield which makes it attractive,” Romo added. Million-Dollar Education A new flight school has opened at the Mojave Air & Space Port for training test pilots and test engineers who need precise skills when working with new aircraft. For decades the U.S. military had been the training ground for these pilots but with budgetary cutbacks, the military branches don’t produce the number of pilots they used to. So it is up to civilian firms like International Flight Test Institute to make up the difference. “We didn’t really see anywhere it was done in a sufficient quantity and in the subjects the civilian companies need,” said Bill Korner, chief executive of the institute. Korner already has experience running an aviation company as the head of Flight Research Inc., also at Mojave, which trains pilots how to get an out-of-control aircraft flying safely again. Startup costs are negligible as the International Flight Test Institute uses some of the same aircraft and instructors as Flight Research. The school will, however, acquire additional aircraft, such as turbo props, helicopters and planes capable of reaching supersonic speeds that give students a variety of flying experiences, Korner said. “It gives a smattering of things they can take back with them,” he added. Classes at the institute start in March. A professional 12-month course is limited to 12 students and can cost up to $1 million. A shorter, two-week refresher course will instruct 18 students and costs $7,000. The tests for new aircraft are created by the flight engineers and it is up to the pilots to perform them to show what the aircraft is capable of. This requires flying at precise speeds and altitudes that a typical pilot cannot do, Korner said. The testing of new aircraft, too, brings an element of danger. Even with the advances in aircraft design using computers and sophisticated wind tunnel exercises, once in the air something can go wrong, whether it be a military, commercial or even business jet, such as the crash in 2011 of a Gulfstream G650 that killed two pilots and two flight test engineers. “The risk is dependent on what you are testing,” Korner said. “If you are testing a military aircraft, that can be risky. A (Boeing) 787 is much less risky but there are things that could go wrong.” Staff Reporter Mark R. Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or [email protected]