Eclipse Aviation, the company that brought Microsoft ambition to the very light jet market, is in the news again. Apparently the engines on a new Eclipse got stuck at full throttle and the pilots were lucky to get it back on the ground in one piece. Note that Eclipse, contrary to the New York Times article on the incident, uses the same engines as many other very light jets and they are not the cruise missile derivative that Eclipse attempted to use back in the late 1990s. One difference between the Eclipse implementation and the other VLJs is that Eclipse wrote its own engine control software. Everyone else relies on Pratt and Whitney’s old-school engine control system.
Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/business/13air.html
[Note the implication of this story is that if you own one of these airplanes it is not useful for anything other than soaking up hangar rent and insurance premiums.]
[Saturday update: It seems that the New York Times, as they do with most aviation stories, got the significant facts wrong. The AD does not ground the Eclipse fleet, but only requires a paperwork addition to the checklists, requiring the pilot to check the thrust levers somehow. It is apparently pretty simple. In its early years Eclipse did great managing the press. The stories were always much rosier than the reality. Now as the Eclipse market implodes the newspaper articles are darker than reality.]
Eclipse’s approach toward avionics software systems has always struck me as insanity. Why write custom software when you could use off-the-shelf systems. First the software development problems with Avidyne, now their own software.
Are they an airplane manufacturer or an avionics company?
Come to think of it, the whole invent-our-own-welding system is equally bizarre.
NTSB Urgent Recommendation and FAA Emergency AD.
The FAA Emergency AD tells pilots to do a ground evaluation and if the problem occurs to turn off electrical power. Unfortunately if you turn off power, shutting down the brain-dead Eclipse FADECs, you will not be able to shut off the engines! The P&WC FADEC (like on the Mustang and Phenom) is independent from the ship’s power. Expect more emergency ADs in the coming days as the corrective action recommended is also wrong.
Last weekend, I attempted to use DayJet, the Eclipse-based Air Taxi company, for both a practical need of saving 6 hours of driving over a weekend and to evaluate their service. The value proposition made it impossible to use for my circumstance. I’m glad it worked out that way. Since this latest incident, I would never step into an Eclipse. It’s multiple accidents waiting to happen.
I should have let Ray handle all of the moderation, but I was writing a new posting and decided to approve some recent comments. I managed to delete one by mistake from Jim Howard…
It was worse than throttles stuck full, they had to deadstick back to the airport when they followed their checklist!
I have always shared Rob’s concern about the highly integrated avionics design of the Eclipse.
Way back around 2000 at Oshkosh I asked the Eclipse CEO where the backup ADI was in his cockpit. He said they didn’t need a seperate backup instrument because each display had an ADI, and it was impossible for all displays to fail at once.
That struck me then and now as just insane.