"Baby" jets are causing an aviation buzz but will the market exist?

Tired of long security lines and middle seats on commercial air carriers? An alternative is at hand: entrepreneurial air taxi operators envision a future in which business travelers are rapidly ferried between regional airports in small, fast Very Light Jet (VLJ) aircraft, at prices anywhere from 10 to 50 percent more than today's fully refundable, full-fare commercial ticket, and far lower than existing business or fractional charter costs.

The VLJ — the term coined by the aviation industry — is a single-pilot craft similar in size to existing twin-engine, propeller-driven planes, with room for up to eight passengers. With a gross weight of less than 10,000 lb (4,536 kg), they have a range of about 1,000 miles (about 1,600 km) and are able to operate from runways as short as 3,000 ft (914.5m), By comparison, a more traditional mid-sized, eight-passenger business jet, the Bombardier LearJet 60, weighs 23,500 lb (10,659 kg) and requires at least 5,500 ft (1,676m) of runway.

The arrival of VLJs has been made possible, in part, by small, lightweight and energy-efficient turbofan jet engines recently developed by Williams International (Walled Lake, Mich.), Pratt & Whitney Canada (Longueill, Quebec, Canada) and GE Aircraft Engines (GEAE, Cincinnati, Ohio). A surprisingly large number of aircraft manufacturers — each with a unique take on target customers — are beginning to offer VLJs to serve the emerging market.

Established OEMs Cessna (Wichita, Kan.) and Embraer (Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil) will field aircraft with traditional aluminum-intensive designs, using composites for key secondary structures, while startups Eclipse Aviation (Albuquerque, N.M.) and Avocet Aircraft LLC (Wilton, Conn., in partnership with Israel Aircraft Industries [IAI]) have chosen all-metal designs. Excel-Jet Ltd.'s (Monument, Colo.) new offering combines a composite fuselage with aluminum wings and tail structure. However, Adam Aircraft (Englewood, Colo.), Aviation Technology Group (ATG, Englewood, Colo.), Diamond Aircraft (London, Ontario, Canada and Weiner Neustadt, Austria) and Epic Aircraft (Bend, Ore.) are proceeding with all-composite airframes. Even automaker Honda Motors has built a mostly composite VLJ prototype, the HondaJet, powered by two new Honda-built small turbofan jet engines. (Honda and GE have formed a new company, GE Honda Aero Engines LLC, to produce and sell the new powerplants.) Moreover, GROB Aerospace (Tussenhausen-Mattsies, Germany) is building an all-composite jet that it terms a "light" jet — slightly larger than a VLJ but still smaller than traditional business aircraft (see "Light Jets — Yet Another Category," p. 37).

While manufacturers are buoyant, no VLJ has yet received certification from either the U.S. Federal Aviation Admin. (FAA) or Europe's equivalent, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Naysayers point out that market demand is unknown at this point, predicting that the risk-averse business aviation industry could be slow to embrace the new models, basically smaller versions of more luxurious business jets. One business aviation analyst opines in an Aviation Week & Space Technology article (July 25, 2005, authored by James Asker) that few commercial airline customers will want to move upward to the higher costs of VLJ air taxis, while moneyed charter habitués will snub the smaller aircraft. Unanswered questions include how to insert private VLJs into already-crowded general aviation airspace near prime airports; how VLJs will be affected by local noise and traffic restrictions; how difficult it will be for pilots and air taxi operators to obtain insurance; and how to address the training gap for general aviation pilots who are used to slower propeller craft. Nevertheless, VLJ manufacturers are opti-mistic that the planes will prove to be an economical aviation boon for air taxis and that private pilots will be willing to trade their props to save travel time.