His program has had more than its fair share of ups and
downs, suffering near disasters and dead ends, but through it all Vern Raburn
and Eclipse Aviation have survived every scrape and scare to emerge stronger
and more confident than ever. Today there are five aircraft on the Eclipse 500
flight-test team and, if all goes well, Raburn hopes to have the aircraft
certified and ready to sell in about five months. Eclipse already has 2,300
orders, with more on the way. "This is the year it becomes reality," he told
Show News. "We invented the very light jet about six years ago and our world is
alive and prospering."
The Eclipse test fleet has logged over 700 hours in more
than 500 flights. All development testing is now complete and only
certification flying remains. Raburn says the FAA will start doing that with
the Eclipse in just 10 or 12 days' time.
For every query on Eclipse's prospects, Raburn has detailed
and convincing replies. He says that insurance issues for owner-pilots have
been resolved by the huge investment Eclipse is making in pilot training and
aircraft maintenance. Eclipse will download, monitor and maintain an enormous
database of operational and serviceability information relayed from each
aircraft, allowing it to conduct trend monitoring and preemptive maintenance at
an unheard-of level. This alone will have huge implications for insurance, says
Raburn, as for the first time underwriters will have some hard data to work
with.
"We have taken the aircraft up to 41,000 ft, met our stall
point at 67 kts and flown it to 330 KIAS (452 KTAS) in a dive. Any rumors that
you might have heard that the Eclipse can't meet its speed projections are
nothing more than that— rumors."
He dismisses suggestions that the air taxi market will not
take off. "It will. It will be huge. I can't say when, but it will work because
it's a concept free from the baggage of old-world airline-business thinking.
Small aircraft, flying small numbers of people at very high frequencies. Size
is your enemy here. You can only succeed by being a small jet."
Even the unintentional wheels-up landing suffered by
aircraft N505EA in September had a bright side. "I won't tell you it was a
planned test, but we learned some lessons here. We've made a few design changes
that will help get the aircraft back into the air faster. 505 flew again two
weeks ago," says Raburn, "and the whole episode proved that not only can we
build them, but we can fix them as well." As a consequence, two small skid
plates have been added to the Eclipse's belly design, just in case.
Raburn notes, "That particular aircraft was flying with no
telemetry and did not have the gear warning system installed— another shining
example of how all aviation accidents are a chain."
By May 2006 Eclipse will have 334,000 sq ft of factory space
available, which Raburn says is enough to cope with the first three years of
production. Eclipse plans to be building four aircraft a day. "We have to,"
says Raburn. "We need a 10-day cycle to build, test and deliver. The dirty
little secret of the airplane business is that your biggest cost is not the
engines, or the avionics or whatever— it's the plant overhead. We have to
eliminate that by pushing aircraft out the door."
