A scene from real-life at Oshkosh: Midday on a breezy Wednesday afternoon, the cavernous Raytheon/Beechcraft tent is deserted, with not so much as a straw hat or logod golf shirt in sight. No tire kickers, either.
From the looks of it, everyone is gawking at the mock-up of the new Eclipse personal jet, in a pavilion hard by Raytheons lot. A cynical journalist cant resist drawing this to the attention of a Raytheon PR person. Youll have to excuse us, says the flack, Were out building and delivering airplanes.
And so the line is drawn between the Jurassic has beens of the piston era and the would-be Walter Beeches of the new millennium, who propose to make 300-knot jets available to the common man or, at the least, the company where he works.
And frankly, the two-engine personal jet for under a million bucks seems like such a damn good idea that one can almost ignore the overarching question: Can they do it?
Tall Claims
The two most recent top contenders for the first practical mini-jet are the Eclipse and the Safire S-26, designs that look remarkably alike, which is in some ways reassuring. (On the other hand, delusional marketing concepts can be eerily consistent. And plentiful; lest we forget the VisionAire Vantage, a six-place jet thats almost three times as expensive and has been in the works for nearly a decade.)
Before comparing these jets , consider how aggressively these companies are taking on what may be a portion of their market: Pilots wealthy enough to buy new Malibus and Barons and small companies chartering or operating turboprops.
In a flight of hyperbole we havent seen since Jim Bede went into exile, how about this promotional text from Eclipses Web site: It is more economical to own and operate than all of todays turboprops and most single-engine pistons. The direct operating costs of an Eclipse 500 add up to just $.56 a mile. Thats one fourth the operating cost of a King Air and half that of a Baron.
Its also about a nickel less than a Bonanza B36TC, numbers which strain credulity. The use of the present tense in the promo doesnt go unnoticed. It almost sounds as if you could buy an Eclipse and take delivery next month. In reality, you can sit in a luxurious air-conditioned mock-up, as many Oshkosh show goers did, but the jet is three years-at least-from commercial delivery, with the first flight two years away.
Eclipse is promising a primarily aluminum airframe with a max cruise speed of 355 knots, a stall speed of 62 knots and a range with four people aboard of 1300 miles, with an extended range option. Price in 2000 dollars: $837,500. It will be powered by EJ22 turbofans developed under a NASA grant by Williams International. The jet will have an advanced avionics suite and be equipped for known icing.
In a masterstroke of marketing, Eclipse announced performance guarantees at Oshkosh in July, pledging to meet the speed and weight claims within 2.5 percent and the range within 5 percent.
Safire
Running neck-and-neck with Eclipse, is the Safire S-26, an all-composite twin-jet design to be powered by an as-yet-to-be-built 900-pound TF-800 Agilis turbofans. Agilis was formed in 1993 as an engineering and engine development company. Unlike Williams International, it has no established track record with aircraft jet engines nor does it have a running prototype.
Like the Eclipse 500, the Safire promises 330-knot cruise with a 1400-mile range and a direct operating cost under $200 per hour or about 60 cents a mile. Payload with maximum range is claimed to be 620 pounds or three occupants, including the pilot, plus baggage. With maximum payload, range is said to be 550 miles, thus a New York-to-Florida trip will require a fuel stop. Projected price for the S-26 is $800,000, with delivery in 2003.
But there’s more: Safire has two other models planned. The S-12 is to be a two-place (tandem) single-engine jet with similar range and speed, selling for $350,000 while the S-14 will be a four-place single-engine variant cruising a bit slower-300 knots-and selling for $450,000.
So, lets see here, for about the price of a moderately equipped new Piper Saratoga II SP, you could have a single-engine jet that cruises 125 knots faster, goes farther and costs the same or a little less to operate.
Has the aviation world once again come adrift from reality or are these airplanes remotely achievable?
Key to the emergence of personal jets are the engines to power them; no engines, no airplanes. Williams International reports that its development of the EJ22 compact turbofan is on schedule and, said a Williams representative at Oshkosh, NASA has independently confirmed that our numbers are realistic. Under the General Aviation Propulsion project, NASA ponied up $39 million in development funds for the FJX-2, the prototype of the EJ22. Williams contributed the rest, for a total development cost estimated to be $100 million. By numbers, the Williams representative was referring to both delivered thrust and cost, the latter being important if not a show-stopper for the sub-million dollar cost of the Eclipse. When asked exactly what the EJ22 will cost, no answer was forthcoming. But Williams has previously said that in volume, the engine would cost about what a piston engine of equivalent power costs.
Thats a difficult comparison, since no one makes a piston aircraft engine in the 400 to 500 horsepower range. As for volume, Eclipse initially envisions about 200 airframes per year or at least 400 engines, perhaps as many as 500 or 600, allowing for other applications and spares. Safire says profits will accrue between 150 and 200 airframes a year.
For reference, Lycoming makes about 4000 to 5000 engines a year, many of them overhauls, while Continental produces about 4000, with a lower percentage of those as new engines.
Williams is a principle in the Eclipse development and has been contracted to design the airframe. Both companies report that the EJ22 is so integrated into the airframe design that the aircraft cant work with any other engine.
At 85 pounds in weight, the engine is designed to be easily removable for maintenance and is small enough-about the size of a large wastebasket-to be overnight shipped back to the factory for repairs, if necessary. Thus far, for its millions invested, Williams has at least four EJ22 test engines, with production set to begin in two years. A Williams official told us that the program is on schedule, with no surprises thus far, not that we would expect otherwise in this, the sunshine phase of development.
The Agilis engines for the Safire are a larger unknown. Agilis has never certified a jet engine and has nothing running yet. But Safire still plans to fly a prototype on the same schedule as Eclipse, in 2002. (Actually, Eclipse plans to skip the prototype stage, building a confirming airplane right out of the blocks.) Williams has the advantage of NASA-funded research on the FJX-2, which Agilis will have to do on its own.
Moreover, Williams is doing the heavy lifting on the design of the airframe as well, no doubt drawing heavily on its experience with the Rutan-designed experimental V-Jet, which used off-the-shelf Williams engines in a composite design that essentially proved the flight envelope of what will become the Eclipse and silencing the critics who say these jets cant be done.
Metal vs. Glass
The Eclipse/Safire build-off promises to be one of the most decisive comparisons between conventional metal construction and whats supposed to be high-volume composite construction. The two jets are similar in size, weight and available power. As paper goes to metal and plastic, the industry will get a glimpse of how quickly and efficiently each makes it through the certification process-if they make it through the certification process.
Given the perception that the Cirrus SR-20 has put composites permanently on the map, Eclipses decision to use conventional aluminum construction is surprising. But Eclipse says aluminum offers the advantage to use the sort of high-volume production techniques used in the auto industry, which may be the only way the company will ever hit the sub-million dollar price point.
Curious that no other companies have figured out this high-volume stuff so far-say, Cessna, flushing out 500 Skyhawks a year-what exactly does Eclipse have in mind? The details are sketchy but apparently Eclipse plans to use the highly automated methods-robotics and so forth-found on automobile assembly lines. This has been done to a limited degree in the transport aircraft world but not in GA. It requires enormous investment and, above all, considerable volume to pay off that investment.
Aluminum has another advantage over composites: The FAA understands the stuff. There’s a long history of pressurized aluminum airframes but not so many composite examples and no six-place jets. The Raytheon Premier, now completing certification, is the first bizjet class aircraft to employ a composite fuselage. It still has metal wings.
Whether this is a factor in certification cost and time is debatable. Safire argues that composites are now old hat, since Boeing, Diamond, Cirrus, Lancair and Raytheon have educated the FAA on the finer points of building plastic airplanes. In theory, both plastic and metal come out of the blocks equally, despite Safires insistence that composites are superior. But metal has proven to have a slight advantage in overall weight control in small civil aircraft, an edge that could evaporate as more is learned about composites.
Ramping up for high volume in either composites or metal has proven difficult for manufacturers, not because they cant figure out how but because it takes a huge investment with a long payback period.
Both Cirrus and Lancair-especially Lancair-are struggling with this equation and the outcome is far from assured. Eclipse faces the additional challenge of convincing the FAA to approve its proposed highly automated production methods, which is what CEO Vern Raburn refers to as a disruptive technology.
The Money Game
Certifying any airplane through a type certificate and production is a challenging technical feat but it pales in comparison to the most critical element of any airplane project: The need for money, great pots of it.