ONE Aviation revealed at the Eclipse Jet Owners and Pilots Association annual convention that it had selected the Williams International FJ33-5A-12 turbofan as the engine to power the EA700 Project Canada.
The Canada project was unveiled last year as an upgrade to the Eclipse 500/550. The Canada holds more fuel in a longer wing, with 2-foot extensions on each side, more cabin volume, with a 14-inch fuselage stretch, Garmin G3000 avionics, and more power with the FJ33 engines, according to company officials.
The Williams FJ33-5A-12 is a medium-bypass turbofan capable of producing up to 1,900 pounds of takeoff thrust at its full rating, but will be de-rated for installation on Canada to just under 1,200 pounds.
The FJ33 was originally certified in 2004, with the FJ33-5A variant certified in 2016.
FJ33-5A-12 will allow the aircraft to exceed the performance goals established for the project, company officials said.
Canada will now have a max cruise speed range in excess of 1,470 nm, with NBAA 100-nm reserves, and will be able to climb direct to its maximum operating altitude of 43,000 feet, even on hot days, company officials report.
“Takeoff performance is also significantly improved, enabling it to depart high altitude airports on hot days without offloading fuel or payload,” officials said in a prepared release.
There already is a $100,000 personal jet – Sonex. One seat. You build it.
There is a difference between airplanes for fun and airplanes for profit (or defense).
Airplanes for fun won’t make a company rich. They can stay solvent (sometimes), but the market is small. How many people do you know who can drop $100K or more after tax dollars on a toy? And then they have to build it, too.
Airplanes for profit, airplanes used for business, can be paid for out of pre-tax dollars and depreciated, as well as earning the owners money. Consequently, they can carry much higher price tags than airplanes for fun. There’s more profit in airplanes for profit, so if the manufacturer wants to stay in business, this is the way to go.
(Airplanes for defense are another story altogether. $24MM for refrigerators for Air Force One? Ouch. But it is only our money . . . )
The VW analogy doesn’t really fit (I wish it did, I’d love to have a $100K personal jet – but I want two seats, not one) because if you have a pulse you can get a driver’s license, but a pilot certificate costs significantly more and is rather harder to get. That in itself constricts the market.
So what we need is a sub-$100K LSA, jet powered, write the check, jump in and fly it away, which will carry two people and can be flown on a driver’s license. Again, I’d love one, but I will not be holding my breath . . .
the shear stupidity of the large scale concept for profitability defies what Volkswagen proved 50 years ago. Give the people something that they want. A
$100,000 K small jet is a feasible request and will assist in the re-development the aviation business from the ground up.
David Stevenson
Airplanes grow . . .
Original design gets bigger and heavier as customer-demanded features are added. Need two more seats, fuselage gets longer, need trick avionics, more electrical demand, need bigger alternator and more wiring, need hot and high capability, need longer wingspan, more power, soon you need bigger engine(s), bigger engines need more fuel, so bigger fuel tanks have to fit somewhere, tip tanks, maybe? Might be easier to do a clean-sheet redesign for all these added goodies, take out all the problematic details, upgrade a little of this and a little of that . . . see where this is going?
And the killer is there is MUCH more profit in larger, more expensive airplanes than in little, lower cost airplanes. How many Cessna 150s did Uncle Sam ever buy (actually a few, but not more than 20), compare to how many F-16s, which cost a LOT more . . .
Customers will PAY for capability, aircraft manufacturers are not motivated by altruism, they have to show a profit, and bigger, more expensive aircraft make that much easier. Boeing could absolutely build a modern Cessna 150 (or equivalent), but they are a bit busy pumping out Dreamliners, which is where the money is. Old Chinese expression, don’t step over dollars to pick up dimes. Bigger aircraft is where the dollars are, and lots of them.
Darn, I really wanted that $100K personal jet, too.
Cessna (Textron) should buy the Evolution company and get rid of the TTx. Then finish certifying the gas and turbine models under revised Part 23. Price them below Cirrus SR22T for the gas version and the SF50 for the turbine version. They will eat the market alive.
With Cessna cancelling their efforts with the baby Citation Mustang do more to slow sales and the glut of used jets on the market, why bother to get a foot hold with this one. The Eclipse was initially a good thought, but with the manufacturer fighting the FAA and then going to their congressman to speed up the TC and a PC it was doomed. The principals taking out money to develop yet another single engine jet out of state, then laying off workers as they did, put a black mark on the management and product line already burdened with reliability problems.
Look at how the original Williams V-Jet grew into the larger and larger Eclipse jet, eventually scraping all of the original, revolutionary, concepts that Williams and Burt Rutan envisioned. They completely lost the original design goals for an inexpensive, very-light jet. It could have been an incredible aircraft but ended up being nothing more than “just a small Lear jet” and a complete failure.
http://burtrutan.com/downloads/VJetIIProjectSummary.pdf
OK so bigger engines, bigger fuselage and bigger wings with more fuel and fancy expensive avionics package, sounds like this one is rapidly creeping upwards from what it was originally envisioned to be.