After you look at it for awhile and not a very long while at that the thing thats most noticeable about the HondaJet isn't that the engines are mounted on those weird stalks on top of the wing, but rather that you don't really notice that the engines are mounted on weird stalks on top of the wing.
After you look at it for awhile and not a very long while at that the thing thats most noticeable about the HondaJet isn’t that the engines are mounted on those weird stalks on top of the wing, but rather that you don’t really notice that the engines are mounted on weird stalks on top of the wing. The reverse pylons position the
engines up where the eye expects to see them anyway, which is where everyone else puts them, on the aft end of the fuselage.
But if weirdness, no, make that
audacity, were measured on a scale of 10, the engine pylons might rate a lukewarm five. What goes off-scale high for audaciousness is the fundamental concept of this airplane squarely aimed at a market segment very light jets that is still, despite all the bloviating, in the future. Rosy forecasts aside, the population of light jets exists solely in closely held order books of a dozen would-be jet makers whose truth cant be remotely confirmed by a mildly curious journalist, never mind a hardcore skeptic.
Against this backdrop comes Honda, a fabulously successful automotive giant with zero commercial experience in designing, building and selling airplanes attempting to muscle into a market
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Paul Bertorelli is Aviation Consumer’s Editor at Large. In addition to his valued contributions to Aviation Consumer, his in-depth video productions on sister publication AVweb cover a wide variety of topics that greatly contribute to safety, operation and aircraft ownership. When Paul isn’t writing or filming, he’s out flying his J3 Cub.
