I rode in the back of a Honda Jet on a demo flight recently and wrote up a draft review of the Honda Jet. Comments/corrections would be appreciated.
13 thoughts on “Review of the Honda Jet”
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A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…
I rode in the back of a Honda Jet on a demo flight recently and wrote up a draft review of the Honda Jet. Comments/corrections would be appreciated.
Comments are closed.
Second sentence – *North Carolina* – not South.
I appreciate your economic analysis. I was bummed when the “NetJets for the rest of us” start-ups all collapsed (e.g., DayJet). Your cost-per-seat numbers make it pretty clear why.
I miss your peppering of often-seemingly-random photographs.
Phil,
Am I understanding correctly at full fuel, this jet can legally carry less than 600 pounds of human beings??
All,
I can find very little reason for anyone to buy this airplane, save the person who simply wants to own a new Honda VLJ.
Mark: Yes and no. If you don’t burn off at least 200 lbs. in the taxi it might be closer to 450 lbs.!
It would be great if you had the opportunity to benchmark this against the Nextant 400XT.
Enrico: I don’t think that the Nextant 400XT can be compared sensibly. It is a traditional two-pilot aircraft. So it can’t do the mission of the Honda Jet (rich owner who thinks that a copilot is superfluous). Obviously the performance of the Nextant is vastly greater, especially the range. PlaneSense has acquired some Nextants to hold them over until the Pilatus PC-24 shows up. If PlaneSense is doing it then it must be a smart thing to do! (Though they have their own awesome maintenance department, something a private owner does not have.)
Phil,
When I read the following paragraph comparing the mustang and phenom:
“The plane does perform in some ways much better than the Cessna Mustang (100 knots faster; similar range) and the Phenom 100 (40 knots faster; somewhat more range). There is an option for the lav to be externally serviced, like a Phenom 300.”
I thought those jets were faster, that the parenthetical comments were about those planes. The truth became clearer later in the review, but I’d recommend rewording this section.
Thanks, Fred. I will do that.
I went to the NBAA in Miami in the early blooming of the VLJ. Eclipse was selling slots for less than $1 million with a black-box engine (I think based on a Williams target drone engine) about the size of an office wastebasket that was to be leased on power-by-the-hour plan. When that engine fizzled and they had to go to P&W it was game over. The engines alone (each) cost more than the contract price for the airplane.
I understand the complexity of aircraft, the high level of safety required, the burdens imposed by the FAA, the low volumes leading to lack of economies of scale, etc. but it’s still incredible to me that a small jet aircraft, 70 years into the jet age, should cost 2 orders of magnitude more than an automobile. Airplanes were always a rich man’s toy, but instead of getting relatively cheaper or at least staying the same, they have only become more and more out of reach for all but the 1%. A $99 phone now has vastly more computing power than ENIAC which cost the government millions of (uninflated) 1945 dollars but the Honda jet is scarcely better than a P-80, which cost the USG $110,000 (that would be roughly $1.5 million in 2016 $).
The HondaJet seems like more of the same old same old.
The Cirrus SF50, however, looks genuinely exciting. 5 seats + 1000nm range + 300kts + FL280 is good enough for me, plus it has a reasonable price tag and a parachute!