"It's amazing," comments Safire Aircraft marketing
vice president Bob Stangarone, "when your conservative approach
to production is 400 airplanes per year." Nobody knows for
sure that Safire, Eclipse and the other hopeful companies developing
new, smaller and radically low-priced jets are not right when
they claim that a vast market exists for small jets.
Since Eclipse cancelled the development of the Williams EJ22
engine late last year, the small-jet market has embraced the more
conventional Pratt & Whitney PW600 series and Williams' own
FJ33 as substitutes. One surprising result is that Adam Aircraft's
A700 now looks like being the first light jet to hit the market.
After telling everyone that the A700 would fly before the end
of 2003, founder and CEO Rick Adam was very happy to fly it on
July 22, in time for an appearance at Oshkosh. "It has the
cabin, speed and range of the CJ1, for less than half the price,"
says Adam. He expects the jet to be certificated in the second
half of 2004. Deliveries will start in 2005, says Adam, beating
both the Eclipse and the Cessna Mustang to the market.
"That seems optimistic, but the aircraft is very similar
to the A500," Adam says. The structure and landing gear are
very similar, and there is no powerplant risk." Adam's view
of Williams International could not be more different from that
of rival Vern Raburn at Eclipse: "They do exactly what they
say they'll do. We pulled the engines out of boxes, put them on
the airframe and they worked. Anyone who picks the PW600 won't
have an advantage over us."
The FJ33 is already in small-scale production: the A700 prototype
engines came from a batch of 20, and the other 18 engines "were
sold to the government-that's as much as I know," says Adam.
From the outset, Adam Aircraft planned to develop jet and turboprop
versions of the A500. "The piston came first because it was
the easiest to certify. We assumed that the A600 turboprop would
come next, but in the spring of 2002 Williams came in with the
FJ33." Now, Adam isn't sure that the turboprop will happen.
"Today's turboprops are smaller than the A700, offer less
range and less speed and cost more money."
While the A500 market is heavy with owner-pilots, the A700 is
drawing more interest from air taxi and fractional operators,
together with "a few wealthy guys who are jet-trained or
fly with a safety pilot."
Eclipse now plans to certificate and deliver the Eclipse 500
in the first quarter of 2006. The first airplane, fitted with
limited-life Teledyne Continental engines, is completing its last
series of flight tests, and the next Eclipse to fly, late next
year, will be a conforming prototype with PW615 engines. The next
two prototypes will follow at 30-day intervals. Before certification,
the company plans to build seven aircraft-three prototypes, two
airframes for static and fatigue tests, and two "beta"
aircraft, each of which should have flown 1,000 hours before certification.
Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn says that the company is fully funded
to certification. Eclipse plans to build 130 aircraft in 2006
and can build two airplanes per working day in the facilities
that it has already built. At just over $1.1 million, Eclipse
is still offering a lower price than any other twinjet on the
market; also unique is the airplane's integrated avionics system,
largely developed in-house.
Florida-based Safire Aircraft is at NBAA with a new design. Safire's
original plan was to build an Eclipse-sized, all-composite aircraft,
the S-26, around the EJ22 or a similar engine, but the EJ22 failure
occurred before Safire had started to build a prototype. Safire
went back to the drawing board, and the new Safire Jet is a mostly
metal aircraft with FJ33s, a bigger cabin than the Eclipse, and
a $1.395 million price tag. It's expected to fly next summer,
with certification set for mid-2006. Two flying prototypes are
being built.
Safire's plan is to act as a final assembly center and integrator.
Metalcraft Technologies of Cedar City, Utah, is under contract
to build the fuselage, and Apex Engineering of Wichita is producing
the wings, tail and engine nacelles The company has selected Avidyne
avionics. The company intends to deliver 90 aircraft in its first
year, 242 in the next 12 months and 400 in the 12 months after
that. One potential snag: so far, Safire is only funded through
the first flight. "We're always in a fund-raising mode,"
says Stangarone.
Fund-raising is not a problem for Cessna's Mustang, which is also
due to fly late in 2004 with first deliveries in 2006. Cessna
has selected the Garmin G-1000 avionics suite and the PW615F engine
for the Mustang, but otherwise it's a conventional design, representing
an evolutionary step forward in low-cost, high-quality airframe
manufacture, says senior vp for product development Jack Pelton.
Even at $2.3 million, well over the advertised price of its new-start
rivals, the Mustang already has 330 customers waiting in line-and
Pelton says that the main obstacle to further sales is that the
first available position is "out there a ways."
Completely new to NBAA-and an almost complete surprise when
it was announced in August-is the Avocet ProJet. Aimed squarely
at the air taxi and fractional markets, with an emphasis on reliability
and durability for airline-style operations, the $2 million, bigger-than-Eclipse
Avocet starts with a big advantage over many competitors: it is
being designed and built by Israel Aircraft Industries, an experienced
business jet manufacturer. (The ProJet's rounded-rectangle cross
section, claimed to be roomier than that of any other light jet,
traces its heritage through IAI's Westwind to the original Aero
Jet Commander.) The Connecticut-based company's Wall-Street-heavy
management team is led by David Tait, one of the first executives
at Virgin Atlantic Airways.
Avocet's appearance at NBAA will be a "meet-the-company"
occasion, marketing vice president Jeff Myers tells Show News.
The new project is a month or more away from the next round of
key decisions: the selection of engine (FJ33 or PW615) and avionics
contractors and a formal, full-scale launch, but all these decisions
will be taken by the end of the year. First deliveries are due
in late 2006 or early 2007.
Also due to fly next year, in late summer or early fall, is
the Aviation Technology Group Javelin. If Eclipse, Safire and
others are trying to build the Toyota Camry of jets, ATG's target
is the Mazda Miata-a sporty image and performance combined with
safety, reliability and predictable costs. The Javelin resembles
the Northrop T-38 supersonic trainer, from its tandem cockpit
to its modular aluminum airframe, but it is being designed with
benign handling characteristics and the same FJ33 engines and
Avidyne avionics as its more conventional contemporaries.
ATG CEO George Bye says that the Javelin will appeal to "the
business pilot and owner who's now in a CJ1 or a Premier, who
wants to step up to greater performance at a similar price, with
lower operating costs." The fighter-like cockpit is not just
for style-it reduces drag and weight compared with a conventional
business jet, a clear advantage if you don't need to carry passengers,
and one reason that ATG can claim Mach 0.92 on two FJ33s. Bye
says that ATG has received inquiries from companies which, today,
use business jets to carry small, high-priority freight, ranging
from human organs for transplants to financial instruments.
The first Javelin to fly will be "conforming in many senses,
but more than a proof of concept vehicle," says Bye. The
first of three conforming prototypes is due to fly in mid-2005,
with certification at the end of 2006.
Another unique variation on the light-jet theme is the single-FJ33,
five-seat Diamond D-JET. The transatlantic Diamond company-founded
in Austria, but with manufacturing facilities in Canada-is best
known for its graceful motorgliders and lightplanes, but is now
migrating into business transports with its twin-diesel DA 42
TwinStar. As the twin emerges from certification, the company's
engineering staff is moving to the D-JET. Diamond is not exhibiting
at NBAA this year but will be here in 2004, around the time of
the D-JET's first flight. Certification is expected in early 2006.
The D-JET will be offered with a higher gross weight in the USA
than in Europe, because of tax laws there that penalize airplanes
weighing more than 4,410 pounds (2,000 kilos) fully loaded.
The D-JET comments U.S. marketing director John Gauch, "is
designed to fit the role. We didn't set out to build a jet. We
wanted to fly at 25,000 feet and 315 kt and we selected a jet
to do that." With a target price of $850,000, the D-JET competes
with existing and emerging single-turbine aircraft in a market
that is evolving rapidly. At least three new single-turbine types-the
D-JET, the Grob G160 Ranger and Extra 500-are under development
in Europe, spurred by a number of factors: the elimination of
Customs and immigration barriers between European Union nations,
relatively short distances and an airline system increasingly
dominated by low-fare, leisure-focused carriers.
The new starts are full of optimism, but developing a new jet
is never easy-and NBAA may see some announcements concerning another
light jet, the Sino Swearingen SJ30-2. This long-delayed program
(the design was unveiled at NBAA in 1987) took a tragic turn on
April 26 when the first conforming prototype crashed during flutter
testing. The airplane was in a high-speed dive, aiming at a test
point just below Mach 0.9, when it was seen to start a barrel
roll to the right. Test pilot Carroll Beeler told the chase pilot
that he could not control the roll and that the g forces were
too high for him to escape the airplane. The prototype was apparently
intact when it struck the ground, killing Beeler.
Late last year, Sino-Swearingen shareholders replaced its management,
bringing in CEO Carl Chen and vp marketing Gene Comfort, formerly
of the defunct AASI JetCruzer project. The second conforming prototype
flew in March of this year, and has been continuing the flight-test
program, and the third airplane is complete, says Comfort, but
there is no firm date for certification. The company is also being
sued by some of its dealers after it informed them that it was
changing the terms of its outstanding sales agreements.
