Well funded startup plans $775K twinjet
Computer/software entrepreneur Vern Raburn is betting
that what the world is clamoring for now is a six-seat twinjet with a
target price tag of $775,000 (2000 $) and the 44-cents-per-mile direct
operating cost of a Cessna 182. Considering that sort of a purchase price
won’t even buy a new Piper Malibu Mirage pressurized piston single
($840,000+) or Baron 58 normally aspirated piston twin ($950,000+) today,
Raburn is confident of a healthy market for his brainchild. The Eclipse
500 will be a product of what Raburn calls “disruptive technology,” in
that it will turn on its head the market’s traditional notion of how much
new airplane a dollar buys.
The Eclipse 500 will be the first in a
series of jet-powered aircraft to be developed by Raburn’s Eclipse
Aviation Corp. More than technological and financial hurdles, Raburn
acknowledges that perhaps the toughest obstacle he faces at this stage
will be the skepticism surrounding a new entrant with such a lofty
goal.
To combat the credibility issue, president and CEO Raburn has
assembled a management team that includes chairman Harold Poling, former
chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Co; board member Dr. Sam Williams, chairman
of the engine manufacturer that will power the Eclipse; v-p of product
development Dr. Oliver Masefield, former v-p of R&D at Pilatus; and
v-p of finance and administration Peter Reed, who forged the way for AM
General’s Hummer military truck contracts. Other board members include
Northrop Grumman chairman, president and CEO Kent Kresa and MiniMed
chairman and CEO Al Mann.
Raburn himself is well known in the
business circles of the computer and software world. In the mid- 1970s he
opened one of the nation’s first computer stores (the Byte Shop in
Westminster, Calif.). Shortly thereafter, he joined Microsoft as employee
number 18 and served as president of the consumer products division. He
then moved to Lotus Development and played an integral role in the launch
of Lotus 1-2-3. Among Raburn’s 32 “launches,” 25 have been successful,
Symantec and Slate among them. Most recently, Raburn worked as president
of the Paul Allen Group, overseeing technology investments for Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen.
Raburn is an avid pilot, and he serves on
the boards of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and its Warbirds
of America branch. His personal fleet includes a Lockheed Constellation,
Douglas A-26 Invader, North American SNJ-5 and, for business travel, a
Rockwell Commander 690B twin turboprop. It was while making his appointed
rounds as Paul Allen Group president, alone at the helm of a CitationJet
for more than 1,000 hr, that Raburn warmed to the concept of the Eclipse.
This is the way to travel, he told himself, but at $3- to $4 million it’s
still too exclusive. His contempt for the modern airline travel
experience, shared by countless millions of his fellow business travelers,
fueled the fire.
So far Raburn has assembled $60 million in
backing–less than one-fifth of a total investment that he expects to be
“well north of $300 million.” Compared with the dubious estimates of
development funding that have dogged some other aircraft launches by new
entrants in recent years, Raburn’s budget seems well rooted in the
realities of the undertaking and adds measurably to the credibility of the
venture. His circle of friends, colleagues and associates is clearly the
richest cream of the digital-age crop. Raburn’s former boss at Microsoft,
Bill Gates, has endorsed the project, but the names of individual
investors are not being disclosed. Raburn expects Eclipse Aviation to be
profitable in 2005.
Power by
Williams
So much for the credentials of the people behind
the project. What of the product?
A couple of years ago Dr. Sam
Williams began to trickle-feed details of the small, relatively
inexpensive turbofan engines under development for general aviation at
Williams International with NASA GAP funding, and it soon became clear
that these powerplants held the promise of doing for the lower end of
general aviation what the advent of the jet engine had done for the
airlines and business aviation in the 1960s. Williams whetted appetites at
EAA Oshkosh in 1997 when it showed the V-Jet II, a small V-tail Rutan
design powered by a pair of Williams FJX turbofans. The airplane was
presented simply as a demonstration of what these
tiny engines could
be expected to spawn.
Raburn met Dr. Sam Williams in 1996 and has
since contracted with the Michigan-based engine manufacturer to develop an
engine, based on the FJX2 and known as the EJ22, for the sole use of
Eclipse Aviation. Raburn said no other airframe company is allowed to use
the FJX2/EJ22 in a competing project for a specified (but as yet
unannounced) period of time–a setback, apparently, for Florida-based
Safire Aircraft, whose S-26 thus far has been destined to use a pair of
FJX2s. (Safire president Michael Margaritoff told AIN, “We have an
agreement with an engine manufacturer that we are working with hand in
hand.”)
Eclipse plans no proof-of-concept (POC) airplane and will
fly the first of four fully conforming flight-test aircraft in the spring
of 2002. A 14-month flight-test program is planned toward FAA Part 23
certification and first deliveries in 2003.
Eclipse and Williams: A Novel Relationship
The
relationship between Eclipse and Williams International is unusual, and it
underscores Eclipse Aviation’s plan to be a “virtual company” initially,
with interim headquarters on Raburn’s home turf of Scottsdale, Ariz.
Williams is developing the EJ22 at Eclipse’s expense and will manufacture
and supply the finished product to Eclipse. Under contract to Eclipse,
Williams International is also designing, developing and FAA certifying
the aircraft and production facilities for the Eclipse 500. Once the
airplane is certified, the development team led by Masefield will
transition and become employees of Eclipse Aviation. The engine work at
Williams International is being done for Eclipse Aviation in Williams’
engine facilities. The aircraft design and development work is being done
in a segregated area dedicated to Eclipse at Williams under the direction
of Masefield.
The engine and airframe are being designed, developed
and certified as a single, integrated product, with Williams playing a
major role in systems integration “because the engine and airframe are so
highly integrated,” according to Eclipse literature. “For example, control
functions that traditionally have been performed by the engine are
performed by the aircraft computer system.” FedEx will play a prominent
role in the maintenance program for EJ22s in service. If an engine
misbehaves, the lightweight powerplant will be removed, crated and sent to
Williams overnight, while a replacement is simultaneously overnighted to
the operator.
Four engines currently in test have logged more than
100 hr, and FAA certification is expected
in 2003. Each EJ22 in the
Eclipse 500 will produce 770 lb of thrust and weigh just 85 lb, for a
thrust-to-weight ratio of 9.05:1. This is a massive leap for propulsion
efficiency when you consider that the Rolls-Royce Deutschland BR710,
parsimonious enough to propel the GV and Global Express 6,500 nmi, has a
thrust-to-weight ratio of only 4.71:1 (16,500 lb of thrust from 3,500 lb
of engine weight).
The EJ22s on the Eclipse will be mounted
unusually far aft on the fuselage–so far aft, in fact, that the fuselage
taper allows their centerlines to be separated by just 41 inches. In the
event of an engine failure, predicted Raburn, the Eclipse will present its
pilot with “less than one-eighth of a ball of adverse yaw.” This close
spacing far aft places the engines out of any birdstrike path–in fact the
engines are invisible in a frontal view of the airplane. Engines and wings
will be de-iced with, respectively, lip heat and (most likely)
electro-expulsive.
At present, 140 people are working on the
Eclipse 500, and a one-fifth-scale model went into a wind tunnel in
Seattle last month. (“With computing the way it is today, I would say
we’re within a decade of wind tunnels being shut down,” Raburn
predicted.)
Sea Change
The sea
change in social and work habits and the realities of the overburdened
airline system that Raburn believes will support the introduction of the
Eclipse have been documented already by NASA in its vision for a small
airplane transportation system (SATS).
• The airline infrastructure
groans at the seams ever more loudly as 82 percent of all airline
passengers are funneled through just 22 major airports in a hub-and-spoke
system that is beyond its capacity.
• Telecommuting and
decentralization of industry and manufacturing move businesses and workers
farther from those strained hubs.
• Technology reduces the cost and
simplifies the act of piloting a small aircraft as safe, reliable
transportation. Thus simplified, the task of staying current becomes less
onerous for the pilot.
• Automotive design makes the buyers of these
airplanes, accustomed as they are to their BMWs and Lexuses, feel as
cosseted and cocooned in their airplane as they do in their
car.
Perhaps surprisingly in a day and age when composite
construction has gained major ground in aircraft manufacturing, the
Eclipse 500 will be made mostly of aluminum. But the $775,000 price will
be made possible only by the adoption of radical new, simplified
manufacturing techniques, Raburn emphasizes. The sound of rivet guns will
remain at Eclipse’s facilities (location yet to be decided but likely in
the Southwest), but it will not be human hands directly actuating those
rivet guns. Expect Eclipses to take shape on low-cost, high-volume
automated metalworking machinery.
Pilot workload will be
“dramatically reduced” through use of integrated systems and intuitive
displays, presumably drawing on NASA/industry’s highway-in-the-sky
research. Early illustrations of the envisioned IFR-capable instrument
panel show three large displays and no dials or gauges. FMS and three-axis
autopilot will be standard, and radar might be, too, said Raburn. The
pilot will fly this all-digital airplane with a sidestick moving
conventional mechanical controls (no fly-by-wire).
Cockpit design
and Eclipse Aviation’s involvement in training are two of the most
important areas of influence in the company’s goal of achieving a tenfold
improvement in safety over existing GA aircraft.
The choice of
avionics vendor will be announced at EAA Oshkosh this summer.