What’s new in the world of Aviation

The annual Oshkosh fly-in is winding up and there are a few interesting developments in the world of small airplanes that might interest readers of this weblog. Here are the news stories that caught my eye…

The market for small airplanes is improving, with shipments up roughly 20 percent over the first six months of 2005. Business jet shipments are up 28 percent to 415 machines (Jan-June 2006) and will go up a lot more because Eclipse Aviation just got its FAA certification and they’ll be making more than 500 jets per year at $1.5 million each. Honda has decided to turn its experimental jet into a product, to be certified in 2010. They’ve partnered up with Piper, one of the old-line companies that is devoted to high prices, low volumes, and bad customer service. Eclipse is probably the more interesting company because they’re doing everything from scratch. The problem with the little jets is limited range. Eclipse started out promising 1800 nautical miles, but now they’re down to 1100 n.m. or so. Honda’s projected range is similar. You’d have to stop twice on the way to California, once on the way back. A more interesting jet might be the Taiwan-financed Sino Swearingen, which was certified last year. It costs $6 million, but it does the things the average person would expect a jet to do. It will go fast and it will go far: 2500 n.m. A standard bizjet that performs like the Sino Swearingen costs closer to $15 million and is much more costly to operate.

Garmin, the guys from Kansas who bring the grace and elegance of Soviet locomotives to in-flight user interface, has released a certified aftermarket glass cockpit, the G600. It won’t be available until mid-2007 and it will cost $30,000, but it will let owners of tired old planes replace all of the instruments at once with a couple of LCD screens, smaller than but similar to the glass cockpits that come with most new airplanes. Something like this would be excellent for helicopters because the gyros in the G600 will be solid-state and won’t get destroyed by vibration the way that “steam gauge” mechanical gyros do. For about $4000 and shipping right now, you can get an arguably better system that isn’t certified by the FAA: VistaNav. This does the obvious thing and gives you a Microsoft Flight Simulator view of the world outside the airplane.

SMA, a French engine company, received an STC to install its diesel engine in old Cessna 182s. The diesel engine burns Jet-A fuel and affords a lower fuel burn and longer range than the standard Avgas engine. There is only one power lever (more/less) instead of three (throttle, prop speed, mixture).

Cirrus, the Saudi/Kuwaiti-owned company that makes my little airplane, is going to sell a turbonormalized version of the SR22. This will make the plane more useful in the West where people need to take off from high altitude airports and fly over tall mountains. “turbonormalized” means that the turbocharger works to maintain sea level power up to higher altitudes. The SR22 isn’t pressurized, however, so folks flying up at 15,000′ or whatever will have to wear oxygen equipment.

Diamond, the Austrian/Canadian company that made my previous little airplane, flew its prototype single-engine D-Jet to Oshkosh. This will compete with the Eclipse by having only one engine, flying only to 25,000′ (compared to 41,000′), shipping a couple of years later, and costing… about the same. The D-Jet will have a “whole-aircraft ballistic parachute”, made by the same company, BRS, that makes the parachute in the Cirrus.

Thanks to heavy and sluggish government regulation, aviation is one of the slowest moving industries. The Cessna 172 and 182 turned 50 this year and are still competitive products! Nonetheless, progress is being made. By the end of 2006, you’ll be able to buy a brand-new business jet, a brand-new four-seat helicopter, and a couple of full-time immigrant pilots all for less than the cost of a single family house in a decent neighborhood in my home town of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In another few hours, I leave for Las Vegas in a Diamond Star DA40, helping a friend who owns the G1000-equipped machine with his instrument rating. The plan is to spend Saturday through Tuesday or Wednesday getting there, getting baked under the canopy in a Midwestern heatwave and stuffing cushions between myself and the DA40’s unforgiving seats. We’ll stop every 1.5 hours to do a practice approach and bathe ourselves in ice water. Such is the luxury of travel by private aircraft. I expect to return on Thursday, August 3. Lacking a private airplane (my friend is going to hang out there for a family event), I will be forced to suffer the miseries of commercial airline travel. It may cost as much as $150 for the 5-hour air-conditioned TV-equipped return trip on JetBlue.