Eclipse formulates new plan for ‘operational excellence’
The corner office at Eclipse Aviation’s Albuquerque, N.M., headquarters has gone strangely quiet.

The corner office at Eclipse Aviation’s Albuquerque, N.M., headquarters has gone strangely quiet. After years of missed deadlines, and facing rising pressure from customers, government regulators and investors, the company retreated to the tall grass last month as executives pondered how to reboot the ailing very light jet maker.

Conspicuously absent: Vern Raburn, Eclipse founder and former CEO, who was ousted by investors in June and soon thereafter severed all ties with the company.
In his place is Dutch investor and former Compaq executive Roel Pieper, who plans to use the Eclipse 500 jet to develop air-taxi networks in Europe and Russia, and whose mantra, since he unexpectedly took the company’s reins at Oshkosh, has been bringing Eclipse to a state of “operational excellence.”

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