Slashdot Mirror

Here is a link to a new breed of jet (VLJ). The jet is very small. It has TWO JET ENGINES. It seems it has a climb rate of 3400fpm on a good day, lightly loaded (meaning light fuel and pilot). The jet can carry a maximum of five people. It's a tiny jet. It has a pretty good power to weight ratio.

It is impossible for him to see 6000fpm off of ducted fan picton engines. The power to weight ratio simply does not exist for him to get out of ground effect let alone climb at 6000fpm. I'm sorry, but the engine technology simply does not exist.

If he can make something that hits 250MPH with a climb rate of 2000fpm, I'd be very impressed. But the mileage he has always toughted would be impossible because he'd have to do it on a tiny turbine and economy would become complete crap; especially down low where his target altitudes are at. To fly where the jet enignes starts to reach peak effeciency, you have to be an instrument rated pilot. Again, that's counter to every claim he's made about his target audience.

So unless he is changing everything he has ever claimed and going off to build a jet, then what he is saying is 100% bullshit, even with the best of wishful thinking.

There are new air taxi and charter companies coming online every day. They are 'on demand' air travel, so they are not burdened by the restrictions the FAA places on the airlines. Currently, they're more expensive, but a 1 hour flight is only a 1 hour flight -- no security and you can fly into smaller general aviation airports that are closer to your destination. These small GA airports have significantly higher levels of service including car rental and concierge service. If more people use these services, the prices can go down to a level comparable to airline travel.

Check out: http://www.satsair.com/
and: http://www.eclipseaviation.com/
and: http://www.bluestarjets.com/

Actually, you raise a couple of good points in this post that deserve clarification:

#1 Security screening for on demand charter ops is actually very light, and will probably stay that way. There is name checking for sure, but no toothpaste confiscation or gratuitous fondling. It will probably stay this way for quite some time due to the shear impracticalities of this.

#2 DOC's (Direct Operating Costs) for the aircraft you mention highlights a key shortcoming within the industry that effectively prevents normal people from accessing the business. A commercial aircraft, by definition, is one that makes money when it flies. Anything that costs $5 - $10 mile with such a small load cannot work, at least for cost driven peole - i.e. the rest of us. But, you might argue, the problem is that no one has ever asked a corporate jet to perform like a commercial aircraft. (Except perhaps the Challenger 600 series that begat the CRJ line, which has its own story.) To give you an idea on how messed up "the culture" of biz aviation is and why your DOC's are so high, compare the cost of a new windscreen on a Lear 60 vs. a Boeing 737. Hint: the Lear 60 part (same part almost) is about 10 times more expensive - why? Because the idiots that buy Lear 60's tend not to be price sensitive, .. i.e. like the rest of us. Hopefully Eclipse will fix that problem, but don't count on it.

#3 Eclipse is a manufacturer, not service developer. They want to sell more units by "hoping" that air taxi takes off, but some don't think it can / will under present cultural paradigm. When thinking about Air Charter for the Unwashed Masses you really have to look at companies like Southwest to see how they made it. They looked (in 1971) at a broken model / pricing structure and asked themselves how to quadruple the market size. Once they figured out their "best" price on a cost plus basis, they offered something that revolutionized scheduled air. Air taxi folks really don't think this way yet. DayJet might, but they also may have picked the wrong aircraft.

The key to the whole question of developing "Everyone's Air Taxi" is to tackle the utilization problem. If the aircraft (any aircraft, older or newer) flew 2000 hours per year instead of 800, then the prices (let's say on simple turboprops flying 500 miles or less) would be affordable for a larger swath of people. But for now, it will remain in the leagues of the stratosphere where people burn $10,000 a day for fun.

In order for air taxi to work, business owners need to think backwards from what they can sell (to the masses) and then get the utilization / cost structure on the aircraft to match it through proper planning. No one, to date, in air taxi has really attempted this. Great passion and ideas, but poor planning and execution.

Which is not much more than first class

http://www.eclipseaviation.com/files/pdf/Economics .pdf

vs $291/hr for a Piper Malibu Mirage (pressuized single engine piston).

Obviously they would fudge the numbers in their favor but if this technology takes off it will only be a sign of disrespect if your company forces you to fly on a domestic airline, especially for short hops.

No, no guarantees is the Microjets start turning into lawn darts in the hands of cheapo air taxi operations hiring minimum wage pilots, or, worse, every rich asshole in the US buys one and insists on trying to fly it into their favorite ski resort in the dead of winter.

But of I had a few million I'd buy one right now. I have piston-powered aircraft. Nothing but trouble!

Another possibility that might save the day - a no-carryon-luggae airline. I'd be first in line. I've had it with assholes trying to carry on (real world examples) steamer trunks, elk antlers dripping with blood, and 6-foot stuffed llamas. All you people with big carryon items - you deserve the crap your getting now at the hands of the airlines.

A new startup company, http://www.pilotinvestors.com/ seems to be looking for exactly this kind of market.

Looks like an 'air taxi' service with a potentially reasonable price. Probably won't be "really" affordable for most individual commercial fliers, but get a group of four people together and I bet it'd be almost as cheap as ticket resellers like priceline, etc.

I'm going to keep my eye on this company. They're still in the 'looking for investors' stage now, but if they take off (pun coincidental, but funny), they'll make lotsa money. Those mini jets they're buying are quite neat http://www.eclipseaviation.com/eclipse_500/. I wish I had one.

Getting your own pilot's license is a bit of work but easily do-able on your average geek's salary. Then go in on a Cessna with a few friends or join a flying rental club and you've got something that can do the shorter hops easily. It won't be cheaper, but it's not as insanely expensive as most think, and no one will search you or even ask you where you're going (unless you fly through class B or C airspace, and then only in general terms).

Alternately, in a couple years the Very Light Jet (VLJ) market is supposed to take off and offer the kind of services you suggest on a level that an upper-middle-class American can afford, but not yet. Watch Eclipse, Honda, and the others roll out their aircraft and look for the small carriers to use'em.

Yes, but for ~$2.5M(US) you can have a Cessna Citation Mustang 6-person bizjet which is currently in shakedown testing and which will almost assuradly become certified before the skycar. Or if you are commuting by yourself or with only a few passengers there's the Dayjet Eclipse 500 which seats two pilots and 3 passengers for ~$1.3M which is also in shakedown. Basically the skycar is overpriced, underperforming, and overhyped. Basically there's a bunch of 3-6 seat bizjet's currently in testing or early production which cost less than the $3.5M pricetag of this thing, many are listed here. Since it's a page from one of the competitors in the space take all claims about estimates with the appropriate amount of salt, but even when being estimated by a competitor all of their costs come in under $3M.

The general aviation industry is getting a big kick in the pants from startup Eclipse Aviation. When - not if - we get our Very Light Jet certified in 1.5 years, it will revolutionize the way people fly (not only improve fuel economy). http://www.eclipseaviation.com/

No, I hope you make it in your chosen career. We have a lot of AE majors here and most of them are very nice people. The aeronautical field is improving (w.r.t. jobs). In Denver, Adam Aircraft is trying to get a plane certified by the FAA; the guess is that this will never happen (composite spars). In Albuquerque, Eclipse Aviation is trying to get certified and sell cheap jets. Older companies (e.g. Piper, Cessna, Beech, Learjet) expect to do well and some are hiring right now. Airbus has "four established hubs of Airbus activity in North America". Boeing is another player in the aeronautical field.

Do you have any other intrusive questions about my personal life?
I do not have any questions about your personal life. I believe Apple computers are good for certain people and Linux computers are good for certain people. If I have a concern about Apple, it is that its hardware is overpriced and underpowered; if these things do not matter, then use a Mac. For "grandmas", Apple might produce a very good product.

Sounds like you're describing Eclipse Aviation.

Fuel usage.

Williams also makes plenty of engines for small General Aviation aircraft.

Though their most notable recent venture with the EJ22 and Eclipse Aviation has just fallen through. It was a contract in which Eclipse had exclusive rights for use of the engine for an unreleased amount of time. So anyone else who was in the market for said engine went looking elsewhere. Now Eclipse doesn't want it, and everyone else who might want it is using a competitor. Ouch!

~Blake

Some of the newer airlines, like JetBlue, provide much nicer and pleasenter service - and they are making money.

The other option is to build an airline with small airplanes (like Eclipse) and create a airline network that takes advantage of the thousands of smaller airports around the US to provide faster door-to-door transportation.

IEEE Spectrum magazine has a similar article actually written by O'Keefe. One thing that concerns me with both of these articles is the lack of any mention of NASA's often forgotten role as the AERONAUTICS and Space Administration.

NASA's rather underfunded work with the SATS program has the potential to completely revolutionize air travel and even population distributions (better access to flights and less reliance on the few major hubs could mean more industry for smaller communities and some officials even predict a trend away from cities and suburbia to one of the 10,000 smaller and even rural centres with decent airports).

NASA's aeronautic programs have also recently supported the development of innovations like the Eclipse 500 low-cost microjet, which, if successfully introduced, could be one of the biggest technology stories of the last few years, with the potential to have a massive impact on society. (As an interesting aside, the Eclipse is heavily funded and managed by big players in the computer and software industries, the CEO is the former head of Symantec and the Paul Allen Group, and Bill Gates apparently owns a significant percentage - insert windows crash joke here).

Space is cool, but basic and applied research in aviation is at least as important and no one else really covers this mandate in the way NASA can and sometimes does. It would be a real pity if NASA simply becomes the National Space Agency (I guess they couldn't use the acronym though).

IEEE Spectrum magazine has a similar article actually written by O'Keefe. One thing that concerns me with both of these articles is the lack of any mention of NASA's often forgotten role as the AERONAUTICS and Space Administration.

NASA's rather underfunded work with the SATS program has the potential to completely revolutionize air travel and even population distributions (better access to flights and less reliance on the few major hubs could mean more industry for smaller communities and some officials even predict a trend away from cities and suburbia to one of the 10,000 smaller and even rural centres with decent airports).

NASA's aeronautic programs have also recently supported the development of innovations like the Eclipse 500 low-cost microjet, which, if successfully introduced, could be one of the biggest technology stories of the last few years, with the potential to have a massive impact on society. (As an interesting aside, the Eclipse is heavily funded and managed by big players in the computer and software industries, the CEO is the former head of Symantec and the Paul Allen Group, and Bill Gates apparently owns a significant percentage - insert windows crash joke here).

Space is cool, but basic and applied research in aviation is at least as important and no one else really covers this mandate in the way NASA can and sometimes does. It would be a real pity if NASA simply becomes the National Space Agency (I guess they couldn't use the acronym though).

I, for one, am terribly interested in the aviation side of this. Using Linux all the way through is very cool and all of that, and I suppose it's groundbreaking for an airline, but it's more an adaptation of existing technology (OS, desktop software, database, web server, scripting software) to a new problem (an airline). Where these guys are really breaking new ground is on the airplane side of things. I read the interview, and somehow I've managed to miss these guys, but I've heard references to this concept before, and as soon as this takes off, I hope to be using it as much as possible.

What these guys are proposing is using the Eclipse 500 to fly people all over the place. It's a six-seat airplane, 355 knot cruise (ca 410 mph), and according to the specs page, it has an accelerate-stop takeoff distance of 2,595 feet. This means it can accelerate to just under the speed it needs to fly on one engine, lose an engine, and still stop safely without running off the end of the runway. This will increase the number of airports Penguin can fly to versus, say, Northwest Airlines, by at least a factor of five. Most municipal airports have at least a 3,000 foot runway. Now, their page is slashdotted, so I'm not sure exactly how they'll handle this, but theoretically that means they could fly me (on a typical trip) from Springfield, MO to New Richmond, WI in a total time of about two hours, including drive time to and from the airport. Currently, it takes about six hours, including nintey minutes for checkin/security and an excursus through St. Louis, Memphis, or (heaven forbid) O'Hare, and then an hour driving from the Minneapolis airport to New Richmond. It's about twelve hours to drive, so it's almost not even worth it to fly, but with these guys, it would be so much nicer. This has the potential to be a serious boon for travellers. Depending on how they do this, it could eliminate hubs, and eliminate having to fly into one of the larger airports, followed by up to three hours of driving.

The Eclipse isn't yet certified, but it looks like it has a really good chance. These guys have been working on it for a while, and they seem to know what they're doing. They're using the Williams EJ22 engine, which is similar to their FJ44 engine that has been very successful on the Cessna CitationJet series. What really amazes me, though, is the price of these things. They're only asking about $850,000, which is barely enough to buy a twin-engine pison (instead of jet) Beech Baron these days.

All of which is to say, I'm really, really excited to hear about these guys, and I hope their business does well. I'll be flying them as soon as I can. They've got cool technology all the way around, and it has the potential to make life much better.

I, for one, am terribly interested in the aviation side of this. Using Linux all the way through is very cool and all of that, and I suppose it's groundbreaking for an airline, but it's more an adaptation of existing technology (OS, desktop software, database, web server, scripting software) to a new problem (an airline). Where these guys are really breaking new ground is on the airplane side of things. I read the interview, and somehow I've managed to miss these guys, but I've heard references to this concept before, and as soon as this takes off, I hope to be using it as much as possible.

What these guys are proposing is using the Eclipse 500 to fly people all over the place. It's a six-seat airplane, 355 knot cruise (ca 410 mph), and according to the specs page, it has an accelerate-stop takeoff distance of 2,595 feet. This means it can accelerate to just under the speed it needs to fly on one engine, lose an engine, and still stop safely without running off the end of the runway. This will increase the number of airports Penguin can fly to versus, say, Northwest Airlines, by at least a factor of five. Most municipal airports have at least a 3,000 foot runway. Now, their page is slashdotted, so I'm not sure exactly how they'll handle this, but theoretically that means they could fly me (on a typical trip) from Springfield, MO to New Richmond, WI in a total time of about two hours, including drive time to and from the airport. Currently, it takes about six hours, including nintey minutes for checkin/security and an excursus through St. Louis, Memphis, or (heaven forbid) O'Hare, and then an hour driving from the Minneapolis airport to New Richmond. It's about twelve hours to drive, so it's almost not even worth it to fly, but with these guys, it would be so much nicer. This has the potential to be a serious boon for travellers. Depending on how they do this, it could eliminate hubs, and eliminate having to fly into one of the larger airports, followed by up to three hours of driving.

The Eclipse isn't yet certified, but it looks like it has a really good chance. These guys have been working on it for a while, and they seem to know what they're doing. They're using the Williams EJ22 engine, which is similar to their FJ44 engine that has been very successful on the Cessna CitationJet series. What really amazes me, though, is the price of these things. They're only asking about $850,000, which is barely enough to buy a twin-engine pison (instead of jet) Beech Baron these days.

All of which is to say, I'm really, really excited to hear about these guys, and I hope their business does well. I'll be flying them as soon as I can. They've got cool technology all the way around, and it has the potential to make life much better.

While I admire Richard Noble and the Farnborough Aircraft idea, I think it will run into the same barrier that has scuppered many a clever aviation startup.

Cost.

The major airlines work the way they do because when you gather up to 400 people together they all share the enormous cost of moving a huge transport aircraft from point A to point B. Joe Average gets to travel for a reasonable price. On the downside the passengers are agreeing to compromise on things like comfort and time wasting. Individual air transport just plain costs more.

What Farnborough is trying to do is reduce the costs involved by building and flying the most economical aircraft possible ( and using a sophisticated scheduling system ) to bring the per/seat cost down to somewhere comparable to the major airlines fares.
Will it work?
I hope so.

Interestingly enough, a US company called Eclipse Aviation is planning on the same sort of idea using a brand new, highly efficient business jet. The plan is to have a fleet of 1000 of these jets doing the Air Taxi thing all over the US.

Good luck to them both.

K.

There's a big NASA-funded push to get the cost of small jet engines down. Jet-powered general aviation would be a big win. Jets are more powerful, quieter, and more reliable than reciprocating engines. They just cost too much to make. This problem is just about to be cracked.

That's the big news. With cheaper jets, lots of aircraft designs marginal with reciprocating engines will make sense.

Very, very few people can do really good mechanical design. All the mechanical teletype machines were designed by Ed Klienschmidt. Williams, the designer of the EJ22, designed the jet engines for cruise missiles, and the backpack jet engine for the 1960s flying backpack. He's been responsible for most of the innovation that worked in small jet engines. He's in his 80s. Unclear if anybody can replace him.