Company Releases White Paper On Eclipse 500 Reliability And Maintainability

Eclipse Aviation Tuesday announced its first US Factory Service Center location outside of its Albuquerque (NM) headquarters and outlined its customer support plan for the Eclipse 500 twin-engine jet. The company also released a white paper, "Reliability and Maintainability Design of the Eclipse 500 Jet for High Utilization Applications," that explains how the Eclipse 500 aircraft design will increase aircraft reliability and reduce aircraft downtime for both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance.

"At Eclipse, we have always understood that building a high-performance aircraft is just the first step towards success," said Vern Raburn, President and CEO of Eclipse. "We will apply Eclipse's value philosophy - a better product at a lower cost - across all aspects of aircraft ownership, including customer support."

At the heart of the plan is Eclipse's deep service and support commitment to the Eclipse 500 aircraft and complete customer satisfaction. A network of seven US Factory Service Centers will be dedicated to Eclipse 500 maintenance. The first two centers will open in 2006, and will be located at Eclipse's Albuquerque headquarters and at the Gainesville (FL) Airport, pending necessary city and state approvals.

By 2008, an Eclipse Service Center will be within a 1.5 hour flight for virtually all customers in the lower 48 states. In addition, at the first aircraft delivery in 2006, a team of Eclipse customer service and technical representatives will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They will be backed up by an Eclipse 500 aircraft dedicated solely to Aircraft-on-Ground (AOG) problem resolution, which will be available around-the-clock to quickly deliver the parts and technicians needed to guarantee the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

VP of Sales and Customer Support, Mike McConnell explains, "By maintaining a direct and continuous relationship with our customers after they take delivery of their aircraft, we can demonstrate our commitment to customer satisfaction. This allows the Eclipse value proposition to extend far beyond the incredible purchase price of the airplane."

Further enhancing its Eclipse 500 support offering, Eclipse has developed an Authorized Repair Technician program that allows customers to use their own mechanics for maintenance and repair operations upon completion of Eclipse's Maintenance Training program. This includes the submission of warranty claims. Under this program, corporate and fleet customers can maintain their Eclipse 500 aircraft at their own facilities, and owner-operator customers can appoint a mechanic close to home, if they prefer.

"High-utilization operators, especially air taxi companies, demand an extremely high level of dispatch reliability to meet their operational requirements," said Raburn. "Most business jets were never intended for this use, but meeting these requirements was a critical element of our design criteria from the beginning. The Eclipse 500's resulting unprecedented level of reliability and maintainability will benefit all customers, whether they fly 2,000 hours per year or 200."

Key design criteria for Eclipse 500 reliability include:

• Eliminate typically maintenance-intensive systems, such as high pressure hydraulic system and thrust reversers
• Simplify aircraft systems by replacing numerous separate parts with integrated systems, particularly in avionics and systems management
• Utilize long-life, environmentally-sealed parts such as brushless motors, proximity switches, LED lighting, smart actuators and electronic circuit breakers; there are only half a dozen life-limited components on the Eclipse 500
• Utilize the benign, temperature-controlled and pressurized cabin environment to locate avionics and electrical components, including the FADECs
• The first scheduled maintenance event (other than day-to-day preflight maintenance) is planned (subject to FAA approval) for every 300 hours, or two years. More comprehensive and subsequent maintenance intervals are planned for every 1,200 hours and at 10,000 total hours. A phased inspection option will be available to minimize scheduled downtime for those operating at high-utilization rates. 
• Key design criteria for maintainability includes: Access panels strategically located to facilitate quick access to all major components
• Components designed for fast removal/replacement: -A single windshield can be replaced in under six man hours, compared to one hundred and fifty man hours on a Cessna CJ1 -Line replaceable units (LRU) system components dramatically reduce time-intensive and highly-variable mechanic troubleshooting
• Continuous automatic aircraft health monitoring, built-in self-diagnostics and sophisticated mechanics' diagnostic software to save time, reduce misdiagnoses and virtually eliminate intermittent and no-fault-found conditions
• High-precision manufacturing methods and extremely accurate tooling to produce close tolerance and consistent part fittings. This enables parts interchangeability and significantly decreases time-intensive fitting and rigging requirements

FMI: www.eclipseaviation.com