AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2016 - 18

WAYPOINTS

Tale of three companies

BY THOMAS B. HAINES
Editor in Chief

Pioneer jet builders

Editor in Chief
TOM HAINES has
been covering the
general aviation
industry for more
than 30 years.

18 | AOPA PILOT February 2016

EVERY PILOT UNDERSTANDS the significance of
December 17, 1903-the date the Wright brothers first
managed controlled, sustained, powered flight. Wilbur
Wright's 59-second flight off the sand dunes at Kill Devil
Hills, North Carolina, at the end of the day cemented
their place in history, an understandable point of pride
for all those who live in the Tar Heel State, even though
the bicycle builders hailed from the Buckeye State.
Just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of
that flight, Honda Aircraft also made history in North
Carolina when it flew its proof-of-concept HondaJet
off the runway at Greensboro. The flight kicked off a
dozen-year project to bring the innovative business
jet to certification and first deliveries. December is a
good month for aviation firsts in North Carolina. On
December 9, 2015, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta
handed over the HondaJet type certificate to Honda
Aircraft CEO and President Michimasa Fujino, ending
a 30-year quest by the aircraft designer to usher the
famed automaker into the aviation market. The company planned to deliver its first airplane later in the
month, allowing Honda to join an elite group of companies that started from scratch to build jet airplanes.
By my count, only three-and arguably only one
company-achieved that status in the past half-century.
Most would count Lear Jet Corp. as the first, delivering
its first Learjet 23 in 1964. However, the Learjet concept was based on the FFA P-16 Swiss ground-attack
fighter aircraft, although looking at the fighter you'll
have a tough time seeing the resemblance-beyond the
wings with the signature tip tanks. So, if the criterion
is an all-new company to build an all-new jet, Lear Jet
may or may not qualify-you decide. I think I might
know how Bill Lear would vote.
Another likely member of the elite club is Eclipse
Aviation, now Eclipse Aerospace. Founder Vern Raburn
poured his heart and soul-and more than $1 billion
of OPM, other people's money-into the project that
resulted in the Eclipse 500 very light jet. Certified in
2006, the Eclipse 500 was off to a slow start and the
company went into bankruptcy in 2008, emerging
in 2009 as Eclipse Aerospace. I say "likely member"
because even the Eclipse 500 was inspired by the
Williams V-Jet II, designed by Scaled Composites. The
jet Raburn ultimately brought to market bore almost no
resemblance to the Williams airplane, but the tiny V-jet
certainly led to the creation of the Eclipse company.

So given that, Honda Aircraft is arguably the only
company in the past 50 years with no aircraft-building
legacy to design and certify an all-new jet.
I never had the opportunity to meet Bill Lear, but I've
spent quite a bit of time with Raburn and interviewed
Fujino numerous times-and the two contemporaries
couldn't be more different. Raburn, who now works for
Google in its drone business, is opinionated, controversial, flamboyant, and seldom without comment. Fujino,
meanwhile, is soft-spoken, shy, and self-deprecating.
Both are amazingly smart. And I am grateful to both of
them for allowing me to be the first to tell their stories.
In the spring of 2005, Raburn invited me to his
Albuquerque headquarters to be the first person who
didn't work for the company or the FAA to fly his airplane, which was still in the Experimental category. The
"exclusive first look" at the Eclipse 500 made the cover
of this magazine's July 2005 issue.
At about the same time, I received a call from a contact at Honda Aircraft inviting me to Greensboro to be
the first to interview Fujino and to share his detailed
HondaJet research with the world. The "exclusive first
look" was the August 2005 cover story. To that point,
the company had kept the details of the airplane under
wraps, barely admitting that it existed even though it had
flown more than 18 months earlier. My greatest memory of that day was the air-to-air photo mission. I was
flying my Bonanza A36 as the photo platform while the
Honda test pilots flew the proof of concept. AOPA Senior
Photographer Mike Fizer was shooting out of the back
of the Bonanza while Fujino sat in the right seat next to
me, clearly delighted to see his beautiful blue-and-white
creation in flight. He used a small video camera to record
the airplane flying over the hills near Greensboro.
All these years later, neither I nor any other member of the media has had the chance to fly the HondaJet,
although my flight is planned for the next few weeks
now that certification is complete. Look for a story on
the flight in an upcoming issue of AOPA Pilot.
Meanwhile, somewhere out there perhaps some
young, imaginative-and hopefully patient-designer is
noodling a new airframe design that holds great promise. If so, we're standing by to tell the story.
AOPA
EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2016