If anyone doubts Honda Motor Company’s commitment to the general aviation industry, a visit to Honda Aircraft’s new 623,000-sq-ft factory at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, N.C., underscores the significant investment the company has made. The $100 million spent on the new facilities doesn’t include how much has been spent on personnel (700 now, expected to grow to about 1,000 as production ramps up), equipment and the development and certification program for the light HondaJet. Honda Aircraft gave members of the media a tour of the new facility on July 12.
It is interesting to draw a comparison between another company that achieved some success in the very light jet marketplace, Eclipse Aviation, which built 260 jets before going bankrupt. (Eclipse Aerospace has resumed support for the program and plans to resume production at some point.) Eclipse Aviation founder Vern Raburn boasted of orders for thousands of EA-500 jets, yet the Albuquerque, N.M., facilities that were to have made that possible spanned a fraction of the area covered by the new Honda Aircraft campus. And Honda Aircraft president and CEO Michimasa Fujino, who never brags about the HondaJet, has acknowledged only “more than 100 orders” for the new jet. Fujino projects production ramp-up to 70 to 100 airplanes per year two to three years after certification and first deliveries, which are scheduled to begin in the third quarter of next year. Honda is clearly serious about aviation and putting the necessary money into the HondaJet program.
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