U.S. to Certify First 'Very Light Jet'

U.S. to Certify First 'Very Light Jet'
Posted: July 27th, 2006 11:09 AM EDT

The Associated Press

A new light, cheap and fast kind of jet is expected to be certified for flight Thursday.

Eclipse Aviation's E500 will be the first "very light jet," or VLJ, to receive a provisional certification by the Federal Aviation Administration. Thousands more are expected to take wing over the next decade.

The announcement, at the AirVenture Air Show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is one of the biggest things to happen to general aviation in years. Acting

Transportation Secretary Maria Cino traveled to to the state to make the announcement.

"These planes have clearly captured the public's imagination," said Ed Bolen, president of the National Business Aviation Association.
The NBAA defines VLJs as single-pilot jets that weigh 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms) or less. They generally have two engines, five or six passenger seats, automated cockpits and cost half as much as the most inexpensive business jet now in service.

Six other very light jets are in the process of being certified by the FAA.
Honda Motor Co. announced Tuesday at Oshkosh that it will start accepting orders for another VLJ, the HondaJet, this fall.

The FAA officially predicts that 4,500 VLJs will be in service 10 years from now. FAA chief Marion Blakey has called that a conservative estimate. Eclipse alone has orders for nearly 2,500 of the little jets.

The big question surrounding VLJs is who will use them and where they will fly.

Vern Raburn, the founder of Albuquerque-based Eclipse Aviation Corp., predicts VLJs will be used as air taxis: for-hire limousines-with-wings that will take off and land at thousands of small airports. Businesspeople, he says, will be attracted to them because they will get where they need to go faster and with less hassle than on a commercial flight - and cheaper than on a chartered business jet.

VLJs can land on runways as short as 3,000 feet (900 meters), compared with the 4,000 (1,200 meters) or 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) required by the smallest jets now being flown. The FAA says there are more than 5,000 small, underused airports in the United States.

The little jets will not be rolling off the assembly line just yet, though. The FAA granted it a provisional certification allowing all existing planes to be flown, but new ones cannot be delivered to customers until the FAA grants what is called a type certification.

"It means most of the technical issues have been resolved," Bolen said.
Two other companies hope to have similar jets certified by the end of the year: Englewood, Colorado-based Adam Aircraft and Wichita, Kansas-based Cessna Aircraft Co.

Cessna considers its Citation Mustang an inexpensive business jet, not an VLJ, said Doug Oliver, company spokesman. But, Oliver said, "If the air taxi market comes along, the aircraft is perfectly suited for high utilization."

Cessna, which has produced more than 4,500 business jets for the global fleet, has about 250 orders for the Mustang, Oliver said.

I can't wait to see them around the airports. I would imagine Republic will see a lot of them. The one I really want to see is the ATG Javelin. That is one sweet looking plane!

http://www.avtechgroup.com/images/ph.../large_121.jpg

Do you really think these are going to be as revolutionary as some say they will? Also, what about them makes them so much cheaper than a small business jet like a Lear?

Thanks,

Steve

It seems the signicantly lower weight is a lot of it, as the engines don't have to be as powerful.

I doubt these thigns are "cheap" by any means though. You're still talking about an upper echelon of people who will be buying these.

Well, I sure am looking forward to seeing these little jets at ALB. The airport here is slated to be one of 7 maintenance facilities for Eclipse. I've looked for pictures on the a.net database of the prototypes and have come up empty.

I found this interesting blog critical of the aircraft:

http://eclipseaviationcritic.blogspot.com/

I don't know what the guy writing the blog's issue is, but he seems quite informed and he makes seemingly strong arguments why this aircraft will fail.

I hope that he's wrong!

Dan

I do not think we will see many of the javilin like aircraft around personally, I think that it is more a sport pilot thing, most pilots who are owner pilots that I know with turbine planes (I.E. Kingairs, CJ's, and those disgusting Raytheon Premier 1's) are what I call cocktail pilots they fly for two reasons, one is to be able to sit around thier cocktail parties and say yeah I am a pilot and the other is because they do not want to pay a pilot to do the job. As for the Eclipse I see it having inital teething problems but than it will be okay. It will fit right into the mix with the CJ owner pilots and give the kingair pilots an easy in to get in jets at a slightly cheeper price than the CJ is going for used.