On the record with
JACK BRALY, PRESIDENT & CEO, SINO SWEARINGEN

SJ30-2's Said to Be on Track to Make History

Sino Swearingen's Braly still likes to note that SJ30-2 will be first new jet from a new company in 40 years.

"There are a number of people here," comments Jack Braly, "who don't realize that they're making history." What the president and CEO of Sino Swearingen means is that almost 40 years have passed since an all-new company certificated an all-new twin-jet corporate aircraft, longer than many of the company's people have been around.

Sino Swearingen's SJ30-2 has been around for one-third of those 40 years, counting back to the NBAA debut of the original SJ30 project in 1987. This is not a totally fair observation-the current aircraft is very different from the original, and the current project truly dates back to the arrival of Taiwan-based investors in 1995-but it is also true that the buyers have been waiting patiently for the SJ30-2 for some years.

Now, with one conforming prototype complete and four airframes on the line behind it, the schedule seems to be more solid. "We have a well-planned program, but it's a development program and things don't always go right," says Braly. However, he adds, "because we had the nonconforming prototype we know what the aircraft will do. We're not saying, 'the computer says this or that.' We don't see any showstoppers, and I'll be terribly disappointed if we have a problem that takes months to resolve.

"The barriers to entry in this business are almost overwhelming in terms of the money and time that it takes," says Braly. "The company has no income, and the people who are investing won't see a return for a long time. It's not the sort of investment that Wall Street is interested in. But if we do our job right, we can build a product for the next 30 years."

Braly recalls some of the early challenges that the company faced: "We had five tribes. We had Fairchild people from up the road (in San Antonio, TX). "We had McDonnell people, Piper people and some of the old Ed Swearingen folks, and then we added people from Beech. Even among the General Aviation guys, we'd hear 'This is the way we did it at so-and-so.' Now, people say 'This is the way we did it at Sino Swearingen.' But it didn't happen overnight."

Braly admits that the new company "fell into a trap when we did the derivative. We said to ourselves that it was just an engine change and just a fuselage stretch. The whole process is more complex and took longer."
The company accepted two other schedule-slipping changes to improve the product, says Braly: the change to a Honeywell Primus Epic integrated avionics system "was the right thing to do, but difficult to do at the time," and the decision to certify at higher weights also made sense. "Aerodynamically, we could go to 13,600 pounds. So why not do that? These decisions cost time and money, but it is so important to have an aircraft that is right when it comes out."

Another important decision was to offer the SJ30-2 with comprehensive avionics, a fully-equipped interior and a minimum number of options. "We did that to make it easier for the manufacturing people. It puts the list price up-we've regretted it a bit, but we have sophisticated buyers who don't have too much of a problem understanding what the price means," says Braly.

Once the aircraft is established, Sino Swearingen intends to seek out new markets. With the production line sold out to 2004, the company has not been able to accommodate fleet orders, but that will now change. There has been "a lot of interest" from package delivery services, Braly reports, attracted by the airplane's speed, range, low operating costs and single-pilot cockpit. Sino Swearingen has not touched the fractional market.
Finally, speed, high altitude and long-loiter endurance makes the new jet attractive for military and government special missions.