Eclipse Aviation filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware on November 25, leaving creditors holding $702.6 million in claims. The move closely followed two major achievements in the company’s history, EASA certification of the Eclipse 500 very light jet and FAA certification of the Avio NG 1.5 avionics system. Eclipse estimates that total liabilities at the time of bankruptcy exceeded $1 billion, confirming estimates of the amount the company spent to develop, certify, produce and support the Eclipse 500.
For the owners of the 259 Eclipse 500s delivered before the bankruptcy, this move means that there is not only no clear path to the upgrades their airplanes need to become fully functional but also that they forfeit any funds paid to Eclipse for the JetComplete maintenance cost-per-hour-program and other ongoing costs such as subscriptions to Jeppesen nav databases. The Avio NG 1.5 upgrade, flight-into-known-icing equipment and other upgrades that every Eclipse 500 needed were all to have been paid for by Eclipse because the airplanes were delivered in some state of incompletion.
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