In late November Eclipse Aviation filed for bankruptcy, and investors, suppliers, Eclipse 500 owners and order holders lost well over $1 billion. There has never been a financial failure of this scale in the entire history of general aviation. Eclipse investors have lost hundreds of millions, but individuals are also big losers. Anybody who had a deposit for an airplane lost the money. And anybody who took delivery of the 260 or so airplanes to leave the factory has lost all warranties and the promises to modify the airplane to a final and usable status.
A disaster of this size has many causes, but the most fundamental was a fantasy about the economics of designing, building and supporting airplanes. The company also predicted impossibly low empty weights, which then led to unattainable performance and range predictions, and it expected to accomplish all of this in record setting time.
But Eclipse is, at its root, a financial failure first and foremost. It was costing the company more than twice as much to build an Eclipse 500 as it had sold the airplane for. And that was for an incomplete airplane lacking many basic functions and it would have cost many thousands more per airplane to eventually modify them to match the sales contract.
Eclipse founders and management are part of a long line of people who believed they could revolutionize aviation by changing the scale of airplane production. By building and selling the airplane in unprecedented volumes of thousands per year, the manufacturing cost, and thus the retail price, would be cut dramatically, they said. To get to the massive production levels the price had to be impossibly low so thousands would buy before production even began.
The flaw in this logic is that airplanes, even at rates of 2,000 or more per year that Eclipse planned, do not deliver large economies of scale. Airplanes, whether built by Cessna or Boeing, are hand built and costs per unit are only slightly lower as production rates go up. Airplanes are like houses. Whether you're building one or a thousand, they get riveted or glued together one at a time, just like houses are nailed together individually no matter how big the new subdivision.
When Eclipse unveiled the 500 nearly 10 years ago I wrote that the airplane at the initial weight, performance and price promises was simply not possible. Forgetting any aerodynamic or other technical issue, it just isn't possible to build a twin-engine turbojet for less than half the price of a turboprop single, and even less than that of the pressurized piston Piper Malibu Mirage, and be a viable business.
It didn't take any genius on my part to make the prediction. In 32 years at the magazine I can't begin to recount the number of "revolutionary" airplanes that have been introduced and never succeeded. And I can't think of another airplane project that had such an aggressive price as the Eclipse, not to mention impossibly short development cycle.
But it was the price -- around $800,000 initially -- that made the Eclipse such a sensation. Pilots desperately wanted to believe it was possible to do that if a new company started from scratch and ignored the hidebound methods of the existing aircraft industry. We had seen magical things from the electronics industry, and electronic pioneers were part of Eclipse, so maybe their Silicon Valley knowledge could do the impossible in aviation. It was so compelling everyone wanted to believe. And thousands did. There are more than 5,000 creditors in the Eclipse bankruptcy filing, so we nonbelievers were in a minority.
Eclipse founders were different from the established aviation industry in other ways, including an attitude that because they were right, the rest of us had to be wrong. Eclipse punished Flying magazine by refusing to buy advertising, even though they spent lavishly in all other media and at aviation events. My refusal to believe that a miracle from Eclipse, or anybody, is possible cost us money while the investors' millions flowed freely for several years.
But I was wrong about the Eclipse 500 chances for certification. The original design was never certifiable, but I didn't believe the evolved airplane was, either. Experience worked against me in that case because I didn't believe that the FAA would create a new certification category just for Eclipse, but it did. I expected the 500 to be held to the same standard as the several light jets already in production, but it wasn't.
Throughout history the FAA certification standards have treated turbojets differently. As you know, the big change in airplane certification standards comes at the 12,500-pound maximum takeoff weight where an airplane moves into the transport category. More recently there is a commuter category that allows airplanes to weigh more than 12,500 pounds for takeoff without meeting all transport standards, but special conditions are still imposed on jets that force them to meet the key transport performance requirements.
For example, the Cessna Citation CJ family of business jets is in the FAR Part 23 "small" airplane category, as is the Beech Premier I, and others. But because they are jets, every light jet in Part 23 had been required to meet the engine-out takeoff performance profile that demands minimum climb gradients after an engine failure during takeoff. Propeller airplanes, either piston or turboprop, that weigh less than 12,500 pounds for takeoff don't have to meet the takeoff flight requirements, but jets do. Jets are different. Rightly or wrongly -- entirely rightly in my opinion -- jets have been held to a higher standard.
At the initial program announcement the Eclipse was also going to meet the jet takeoff profile because its founders didn't believe they had an option. But as the program dragged on it became clear that the airplane just didn't have the performance to stop on the remaining runway if an engine quit before decision speed, or continue the takeoff and meet minimum climb gradients on the remaining engine, particularly on takeoff from high elevation runways, or on hot days. The performance is specified in climb gradient, not rate, because it is gradient -- the angle of climb -- not rate that gets you over obstructions.
But Eclipse proposed a new interpretation of the rules to the FAA. There is a weight break at 6,000 pounds in the FAR Part 23 certification standards and among the changes is that multiengine airplanes weighing less don't necessarily have to climb after an engine failure, while those heavier than 6,000 pounds must. Eclipse told the FAA it would keep its takeoff weight below 6,000 pounds so, just like piston twins of that weight, climb performance after an engine failure is not always required. I was surprised, but the FAA agreed. The historically unique demands of a jet by the FAA had been shuttled aside and the Eclipse would be treated like any other light airplane.
