Who is going to NBAA in Orlando?

by philg

Who wants to meet at the big business aviation conference (NBAA) in Orlando that runs October 18-22? This is the place to order your Boeing Business Jet. Photo from 2017:

I had some trouble registering this year due to the incomplete list of available pronouns:

I’m excited because Tammie Jo Shults is speaking. Also, for rednecks, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and, finally, for anyone who wants to know where to go after we destroy Earth with CO2… Neil deGrasse Tyson (keynotes).

Related:

18 thoughts on “Who is going to NBAA in Orlando?”

  4. I went in the early 2000’s when the Very Light Jets were the rage. Eclipse Aviation had a vaporware twin powered by the Williams EJ22, a 700 lb-thrust turbofan about the size of a trashcan. The engine was to be a power-by-the-hour unit that was supported by swapping run-out engines into a blackbox restoration program. It supposedly had a very low parts count (the turbine in the brochure looked like a pineapple with little fingernail-sized blades sprouting from it). Williams is/was an engine vendor for cruise missiles.

    I attended with a doctor friend who owned a Piper twin, and he was intrigued with the $500,000 offering price and the technology hype. (Some Microsoft execs were involved,)
    In addition to the radical engine, the aluminum airframe was to be assembled by stir-welding.

    At the time, I had done some airline powerplant engineering on the DC-9, and I told him the project would rise or fall on the success of the little engine. I was in the “fall” camp. Williams came from the defense side, building engines for cruise missiles, which seemed odd for a bargain jet program. In development, the engine got complex (3 spools!) and never got FAA approval. They moved on to a small engine from P&W Canada and a $2,5 Million price, delivered a few planes and went bankrupt. There is some successor company but I had forgotten the project until philg mentioned NBAA.

    • The Eclipse project was funded by formed Microsoft execs who had a vision of “disrupting” the aviation industry by apply the Microsoft “engineering” practices to building jets. They envisioned mass producing an inexpensive jet. But instead they built a few hundred jets that sort of worked, most of the time, almost safely. The test pilots complained about wearing oxygen masks more than anytime ever in their career due to smoke and CO (from engines) in the cabin.

  6. Talking about non-jets… any rumors regarding how Otto Aviation is doing with Celera 500?

    Even if their claims WRT performance are off by 30% in every parameter, it still will be one really impressive bird. I want something which can fly from mainland to HI and is single pilot certified.

    • + 1 Anon 1. This commute of over 6,000 NM from Southern California calls for an aircraft career – perhaps Admiral Kuznetsov will be for sale cheap soon. Before than Selene92 ocean explorer could do the job but in a smaller package and without air cover, lol.

    • @Another anon:

      The big circle distance from KSFO to PHOG is 2029nmi. Not even close to 6000nmi. Most business jets have IFR reserve range from 1100nmi to 1500nmi. Given the jet stream direction, my guess 2600-2700nmi nominal range would be quite sufficient to get from mainland to HI with reasonable safety margin. Otto claims Celera will have 4500nmi range and 400kts cruise.

      WRT Selene 92 –

      I pretty much prefer sailboats (BTW, I got my skipper certs in Hawaii, 30 kts winds are too much fun around these islands… the good thing the boat I did that in had a very healthy weather helm, even with 2nd reef). My pals are trying to get me to do mainland to HI run under sail, but I simply don’t have that much time (or desire to spend days seeing nothing but water), and then there’s an issue of getting the boat back. Not much fun freezing the a*** on the back haul. So if we’re talking about the boats I’d rather spend couple weeks doing island hopping in Tonga 🙂

      @philg (suggesting SJ30):

      Yep, I thought about that bird – it is somewhat large for my typical flight profile (Usually 1, occasionally up to 3 pax), and anyway you cannot just buy it, only a few were made and it doesn’t look like there will be more of them. Not to mention crappy safety record (one of them crashed in a test flight). Otherwise it’d be OK.

      Of all the available jet things the closest to what I’d like is Astra 1125 / G100, but that cannot be flown solo.

      Celera… if it’s real it would be a nice fit, though I’m somewhat dubious about their claims about both aerodynamic performance and about reliability of their V12 engine (RED A03) which supposedly can operate as a V6 if the other half fails. (There are obvious common failure modes for “halves” of this engine). OTOH, it has more duplication in auxiliary units than is usual.

  7. Hi Phil,

    I admit to being an infrequent reader as of late, but I couldn’t help but notice your use of the term “redneck.”
    You probably have more rednecks in Florida than you did Massachusetts.
    Are you morphing into a redneck? Gosh, I hope not.

    • @philg @Mark:

      I love the hillbillies! Especially the ones with Ferraris and Porsches and in-home movie theaters. If they ever want to “rough it” a little and get back to nature, they can visit Hillbilly Haven in West Virginia – the log cabins of which are actually quite modern and well-appointed. Inexpensive vacay. Wear a lot of plaid, bring some Blaze Orange and camo. Don’t forget the fishing gear.

      https://ibb.co/0ZwCP9j

      https://hillbillyhavenwv.com/index.html

    • If anyone dares to “vacay” in West Virginia’s mountain country, I’d suggest watching the movie Deliverance before locking in the deposit on your log cabin.
      My mother was from Williamson, WV and although Deliverance was filmed in Georgia, the locals in WVA’s mountain country would give them a run for their money.
      My friends once participated in a mission trip there and the guides warned them about straying off the main roads.
      I’ll never forget watching a video made of the mission and seeing a local stealing away with a huge teddy bear the missionaries had brought in for the children to play with.
      Jesus only knows what happened to that poor bear.

  9. I look forward to daily recaps of the news from the NBAA Show. Alas, I will watch from the KGAI area.

Comments are closed.