On a beautiful spring morning in Greensboro, North Carolina, it was with great familiarity and joy that I stepped into the exquisite cabin of a deep red HondaJet with company pilot Stefan Johansson, senior manager of flight operations. As I slid into the soft leather seat on the left side of the cockpit, my first thought was that, other than the color, it looked just like the airplane I flew a bit more than two years ago. But a long list of small changes on the surface and beneath the aluminum skin have added up to significant improvements for the light twinjet.
Since the day Kenny G wowed a large gathering of people with his mastery of the soprano sax at the certification ceremony at the factory in December 2016, the HondaJet has seen great success, becoming the most delivered airplane in its class in 2018, according to numbers from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. It also became one of FLYING‘s Editors’ Choice Award winners for 2016 and went on to win the inaugural FLYING Innovation Award, which then-Editor-in-Chief Stephen Pope handed over at EAA’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2017.
