GE and Honda Make First NBAA Appearance as Partners
A new Embraer jet is one of "two or three" potential launch applications for the new small turbofan being studied by General Electric and Honda. Making their first NBAA appearance as engine partners (GE Honda, Booth 1415), the two companies are expected to announce a definitive agreement here, but will probably stop short of a full go-ahead.
The companies are initially focusing on a 1,500-pounds-thrust class engine, but at least one industry executive tells ShowNews that he has been briefed on a larger engine. "It's a very, very nice offering, in a class above CJ thrust," he says. "It's bigger than the Williams FJ44." (The FJ44-4 is rated at 3,500-pounds-thrust.) The engine would available about three years after a launch decision. GE says that the two companies are looking at derivative engines up to 3,000-pounds-thrust, but have no firm plans to move in that direction.
GE and Honda themselves have said little about the joint effort that they announced in February, two months after the first flight of the overwing-engine HondaJet demonstrator, beyond saying that the venture blends Honda's engine technology—oriented towards low manufacturing cost and simplicity—with GE's experience in supplying durable engines for high-utilization, high-cycle regional jets. GE has placed a particularly strong emphasis on extending the engine's time-on-wing, and says that the Honda engine delivers high efficiency with modest operating temperatures.
Also, both companies see a large and growing market for small jet engines—with GE suggesting parallels to the unexpectedly rapid growth of the regional jet market in the 1990s.
GE executives have said that Honda has indicated no intention of marketing the HondaJet, an innovative design which reflects Honda research into using over-wing engines to delay shock formation over the wing and reduce drag. Honda has been designing both aircraft and aero-engines since the early 1990s. The Honda-designed MH02 twinjet, built by Mississippi State University's Raspet Laboratory, flew in 1993, and the HF118 was preceded by two prototype engine designs.
In July, Honda announced a re-focusing of its aero-engine work. The company is forming a new U.S.-based subsidiary, Honda Aero Inc, to manage marketing and production of both its turbofan engine and an automotive-fuel light aircraft engine, being developed in collaboration with Teledyne Continental. In Japan, research and development for the two engine programs is being consolidated in the new Wako Nishi R&D center. Honda has not selected a location for its U.S. subsidiary, which will initially employ ten people.
The executive who has seen the Honda turbofan says that it is "not a breakthrough at this point. They've done some nice things with packaging, and the FADEC is significantly smaller. They're focused on offering a higher lifetime than competing engines."
