Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Eclipse-500:

The original Eclipse company cratered years ago. It was probably the biggest financial failure in general aviation history. Over a billion dollars were lost.

Eclipse promised a jet at a fly-away cost of $775,000, a number that rational observers thought was ludicrous. But just like the firearms rags, the aviation press functions more as a cheering section for the industry, not as critical observers (with the exception of Flying in this instance, which never bought into the hype about Eclipse). People who should have known better ponied up deposits that began at $80,000 and then went much higher. The initial delivery price was closer to twice the advertised price and even at that, Eclipse lost hundreds of thousands of dollars per airplane and delivered airplanes that were barely complete enough to be flyable. There were stories that Eclipse was delivering jets with VOR-only installed radios, along with a handheld GPS.

The cratering was inevitable, really. Lots of people lost their six-figure deposits, as Eclipse had kept going back to the delivery position holders and gotten more money from them. New Mexico had coughed up something like $20-25 million in incentives to get Eclipse to build its factory in Albuquerque.

The new company says its delivering Eclipse 550s. Apparently, as far as the FAA is concerned, they're still 500s. The price is within spitting distance of $3 million. Which isn't that far off the price of a Cessna Citation 510, which was Cessna's small jet model, and which was always priced in the multi-million dollar range.

But then again, Cessna knows something about making smaller jets. They've been building jets for about 45 years or so and airplanes for eighty years. Yet even they have their clunkers from time to time.