Farnborough Team Turns to Sales

Funding for the F.1 air taxi concept has been pouring in through the Internet at a rate of $32,000 per day.

Fresh from successful wind tunnel testing of its dramatic high-speed/low-speed laminar flow wing, Web-driven Farnborough-Aircraft.com is here at EBACE to launch the next phase of its development-drumming up aircraft orders.

To date the company has sold two $2 million F.1 taxi aircraft without even trying-one order came unsolicited over the Internet.

The F.1 is the brainchild of company CEO Richard Noble, OBE, best known for his Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC world land speed record-breaking cars. Noble sees the six-seat, all-composite, PT6A-60A-powered aircraft serving as a "hub-buster," the keystone of an Internet-based, high-utilization, on-demand air taxi service which would open up an estimated 7,800 under-used airfields around Europe and North America. GPS approaches will enable these airfields to be used in instrument conditions without the need for expensive ground installations, Noble says.

Farnborough-Aircraft.com's concept has as much to do with the air taxi scheduling software as with the aircraft. But so confident is it in both that it will offer the software to operators of other aircraft, such as the TBM 700, before the F.1 is even airborne.

First flight of the all-composite F.1 is scheduled for 2002, with JAR/FAR 23 certification in 2003 and first deliveries in 2004, by which time Noble expects to have raised the estimated $40 million cost of the development and certification program. Noble says he has already received applications for license production from the U.S. and Canada. Farnborough-Aircraft.com is here on Booth 7457.