Century Jet Sells Six

Century Aerospace president Bill Northrup was in an ebullient mood by close of business on Monday, after signing six orders for the company's new light twinjet in as many hours. One pair of customers, currently operating a Bonanza, had not heard of the Century Jet and had come to Las Vegas to check out another new product. Twin engines and promised low operating costs were the key to their decision.

Century switched to twin engines because Williams offered the company two FJ33s for a not much more than the single FJ44 that the company had planned to use, and for a lower price than the single JT15D on the VisionAire Vantage. Freed from the FAA's single-engine stalling-speed rules, Century could resize the jet's wing. The low engine price is a major factor in the price difference between the Century Jet and the Cessna CJ1.

Williams executives here agree that the company has set a keen price for the FJ33, particularly as the engine's configuration is not unlike that of the FJ44. But the company hopes to recover its profits through higher volume, both because there are two engines on each aircraft and because, Williams believes, a twin will sell better. Also, Williams works continuously with a select group of partner companies on better and more automated processes for building engine components, and the latest developments in this area will be applied to the FJ33.

Northrup is the first to concede that the Century Jet looks a lot like the slightly larger CJ1. "It's like boat hulls, he says. "You design for the same mission and get the same answers." The Century Jet, though, has a composite fuselage-not to save weight but to reduce the depth of the structure, adding cabin width within the same envelope. The wing is metal, because Century Jet is wary of a wet composite wing, and it uses an airfoil section that was created at Ohio State University in the early 1980s, for the Piaggio Avanti.

By Bill Sweetman