S ixteen years after conception, a decade since its first flight and $1.4 billion dollars later, the Eclipse 500 finally is maturing into a full-fledged business jet, albeit the tiniest in current production. The world’s first VLJ was endowed with promising but untested DNA. As a result, it went through one of the most difficult and time-consuming development cycles in the history of business aircraft.
I enjoyed “Operating Near Hazardous Terrain” (July 2014, page 29) and found it applicable to sailing in rocky, poorly chartered waters. The only difference is I now go at 7.5 kt. instead of 475 kt. and in visibilities of 80 ft. instead of 2,700 RVR. The planning and awareness is all the same.
Range/Payload Profile — Each of the four payload/range lines was plotted from only two data points by B&CA , so they are highly simplistic approximations. The graph illustrates the Eclipse 550 at a 518-lb. payload, 1,109 nm at high-speed cruise in 3 hr. 26 min. FAR Part 23 50-ft.
The Avio system is more than an avionics package; it is a dual redundant aircraft computer system that also controls electrical, fuel, engine support, environmental, ice protection landing gear, exterior lights, pressurization, trim control and fire extinguishing systems. The anti-skid braking system computer is a stand-alone unit that was not planned for the original aircraft.
“The Avantair Failure: Part II” (May 2014, page 30) was an outstandingly written subject. I work as a management consultant in many capital good industries; my roots are in the corporate jet arena. There is a megatrend to move the business model of OEMs and their distributors from build-and-sell to pay-per-use/pay-per-period models. Some of these models include partial ownership of the capital goods, such as fractional ownership, and some do not.
Two dozen of the windshield failures in the U.K. database involved rotorcraft. Of those, 19 resulted from high-speed collisions with birds, with the potential for shattered windshield pieces flying violently into the cabin and piercing the flight crew or cabin occupants. For example, on Dec. 5, 2008, an Aerospatiale AS355 was cruising near Leominster when a large bird was sighted just prior to impact. The windshield shattered and the dead bird’s carcass struck and injured the student pilot in the left seat.
German authorities are investigating the loss of a Learjet after the aircraft collided with a German air force Eurofighter Typhoon. Two people died when the Learjet 35A of aerial target company Gesellschaft fuer Flugzieldarstellung GmbH (GFD) crashed into the countryside on June 23 near the village of Olsburg, between Kassel and Dortmund.
