Florida's Safire Aircraft says the S-26 business jet making its debut here at NBAA "represents a new category of aircraft that will unquestionably revolutionize general aviation."

The four-to-six seat jet is designed to be comparable to high-end piston aircraft in terms of weight and cost, while matching the speed and comfort of multi-million-dollar entry-level business jets.
Target price is $800,000. West Palm Beach, FL-based Safire is accepting deposits in the form of "non-binding purchase orders" to secure early delivery positions.

Company president Michael Margaritoff says he is "thrilled by [the aircraft's] reception from early adopters," but declined to reveal the number of deposits received to date.

Orders will become binding when the first prototype flies in 2002, while the beginning of full-scale West Palm production is slated for 2003.

Luc Van Bavel, a design engineer on the S-26 project, says the aircraft's specifications should be finalized by the end of this year, with "design freeze" occurring toward the end of 2001.
New technology will form the basis for the S-26 design, with composite construction, two of Williams' proposed FJX-2 turbofans providing power, and a solid state, three-panel EFIS (electronic flight information system) as the primary cockpit display.

The S-26 will also offer synthetic vision (SV), which provides a high-resolution image of environment outside the aircraft, regardless of the weather or time of day. Using an SV system, pilots follow a computer-drawn pathway along their entire route, a technology said to reduce the risk of CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) accidents.

"We've have yet to specify which SV system will be used, but are communicating with Avidyne and the other manufacturers that submitted proposals to the FAA's HITS (highway-in-the-sky) program," Van Bavel says. "We know the final system will be similar to the Meggitt system planned for the Malibu Meridian, but it's hard to say what form this will take in two or three years when our production is underway."