Given their current predicaments, Eclipse Aviation and Sino Swearingen share some similarities. Both start-up OEMs have found the money and overcome the adversity to earn type certificates for their jets despite major setbacks and industry naysayers. At press time Sino had delivered just one airplane (17 months after type certification), Eclipse had just delivered its second (nearly six months after type certification) and neither company had the full FAA production certificate that it needs to crank up assembly and delivery. Furthermore, neither company would elaborate to AIN on exactly why there is still no production certificate and why airplanes aren’t flowing out the door and into buyers’ hands.
Eclipse made headlines last month for splits with two key partners: Avidyne, supplier of the Eclipse 500’s highly integrated and much touted Avio avionics/FMS/radios system (see article on page 64); and United Airlines, announced as Eclipse’s pilot training provider in November 2004. It was shades of Williams again (from which Eclipse split in November 2002 over concerns about the original EJ22 engines), only this time much deeper into the project. The resignation of Eclipse’s CFO late last year prompted founder and CEO Vern Raburn to emphasize in a letter to customers that the departure of 62-year-old Peter Reed after seven years with the company was “in no way whatsoever related to the health of Eclipse Aviation.”
More In Aircraft
