VisionAire Testing Bizav Market for VA-12B

Two seats under a fighter-type canopy; 300 kts at 30,000 feet; 1,500 nm range, with full IFR equipment; $500,000. And it's a jet.

Put your tongue back in place.

VisionAire FutureWorks, the advanced projects division of the new company that is building the Vantage, unveiled the mock-up of its VA-12B Spirit personal aircraft at Oshkosh on the last Wednesday in August. By the end of the day, VisionAire CEO Jim Rice suggested that they try to sign up a few customers to contracts that would be binding if the company decided, by early 2000, to go ahead. By the time the show ended on Tuesday, 30 people had signed up.

The VA-12B is designed around the low-cost, quiet and efficient Williams FJX-2 turbofan, although Rice indicated here on Sunday that Pratt & Whitney Canada is also looking at a new generation of smaller turbine engines. The 900-pounds-thrust engine is installed in the extreme tail, behind an asymmetrical inlet on the right-hand side-on the left is a baggage compartment large enough to hold skis.

Like the Vantage, it is an all-composite aircraft with a slender swept-forward wing. VisionAire has commissioned aerodynamics guru John Roncz to design a wing that can blend four different airfoil sections, from root to tip, to provide the right blend of handling and efficiency.

The Spirit is designed as a fully aerobatic aircraft, but with the performance, equipment and cabin comfort to operate cross-country as a business transport. VisionAire has brought the mock-up to Las Vegas to test the reaction of the business market. Depending on results here, and at the upcoming AOPA meeting in Palm Springs, CA, the company will decide whether to build a proof-of-concept prototype in 1999. Production, however, will have to wait until the engine is ready, in the early 2000s.

By Bill Sweetman