Major Acquisition Breathes New Life into NauticAir 450

Archedyne Aerospace's NauticAir 450 is a quite extraordinary aircraft. Described by the company as "the world's first amphibious luxury jet", it will be a twin-turbofan, single-pilot, nine-passenger aircraft capable of operating from land or water.

Powered by a pair of 2,300 pounds thrust Williams FJ44-2 engines, the NauticAir 450 promises a maximum range of 1,800 nmi with a 1,630 pound payload. Takeoff distance from water will be an estimated 3,000 feet, or 2,100 feet on land. The design has its roots in the 1970s when Dr Leonard Gioia, now the CEO of Archedyne, began to look at ways to radically improve the aerodynamic efficiency of the (prop-driven) amphibians that were available at the time.

Though fun to fly, and offering tremendous 'go anywhere' practicality, amphibians were slow and came with heavy maintenance costs. Working with Embry-Riddle Aeronautic University, and NASA aerodynamicist Dr Richard Whitcomb, Dr Gioia developed a new sponsoned tunnel hull fuselage, for which he was awarded a U.S. patent in 1987. This unique configuration produced unprecedented hydrodynamic stability as well as relatively low-drag, high-speed aerodynamic performance. An enhancement of the original design of the sponson is now patent-pending.

In the early 1980s, a number of in-depth conferences were held with top aerodynamicists at Southwest Research in San Antonio, TX. They offered to build two prototypes and guarantee FAA certification for $70 million. However, the conflict of interest between their non-profit status and the methods needed to raise the necessary funds prohibited them from doing so. It was not until 1999 that serious interest in the project was revived, spurred largely by the advent of computer-aided design techniques that would allow the design to be fine-tuned and reintroduced for funding.

Speaking to Show News, Denis Bonneaux, Archedyne's director of business development, confirmed that the company is about to take a major new step forward. "We are continuing to gather investors but we are also in the process of acquiring another aircraft manufacturer, which will have a major impact on our future plans.

"Right now we have formed strategic alliances, particularly with academia, and we are working very closely with Embry-Riddle at Daytona Beach in Florida. We feel that partnering with a university can only help, and they are an internationally known organisation. We were looking for opportunities in Florida-a location that works well for us and where we would like to stay. Embry-Riddle has a student base of about 22,000, brings great prestige with it, and our agreement with them has very broad implications.

"We have made some new refinements to the design that will be released in the next six or eight months. We are currently doing CFD (computational fluid dynamic) testing and we are looking at additional tank testing. We are currently talking to two facilities with regard to running models there, and to a couple of engineering companies to outsource our design engineering tasks. Each one brings its own strengths and we should have a decision sorted out within six months.

"We expect to have a prototype flying in 32 to 34 months time, and we would like it to be a conforming prototype. All told there is a requirement for us to run three prototypes for certification purposes. "

The NauticAir 450 will be certified to FAA FAR 23 standards, or maybe FAR 25. "There hasn't been a new amphibian like this for a long time-not ever, in fact-so we will definitely be ploughing some new ground" said Bonneaux.

Customer interest is very strong, he noted. "We have a serious customer inquiry base of well over 100, and we will soon be setting up delivery positions for them to purchase We'll start taking deposits within the next six months. The target price for the NauticAir 450 is $5 million, based on the (eventual) production rate. We have no optimum rate set yet. We'll make as many as we can sell, but I would expect production to run at about 20 per year."

The first customer deliveries are planned for 2005/06.

By Robert Hewson