ANN Readers First To Be Invited to Track The Progress of the Eclipse 500

It's been a long, hard road for the Eclipse 500. It was bad enough that this bird challenged conventional thinking in terms of what it would cost and who might buy it, but it also wound up taking a lot of industry flack from nay-sayers who (frankly) didn't take the time to look closer at one of the most revolutionary aircraft development projects since the original Learjet.

Interestingly; the development of the Eclipse 500 has produced a number of competitors of varying strength and validity. With mighty Cessna having announced their upcoming Mustang (which will apparently become a series of entry-level jets, from what we hear...), and new kids-on-the-block, Adam Aircraft, Safire and even Avocet (which has some potentially heavy-duty backing), the Eclipse 500 pretty much defined a new market segment even before the first flight of the production airplane. It also spawned a war of words -- some of them ridiculous --  especially that of the now-idled Maverick Twinjet program, which sought (bizarrely) to equate the experimental prototype multi-engine homebuilt jet with the Eclipse 500... which was always designed to be a certified bird.

The E-500 was always designed to be a revolutionary aircraft, not just in terms of being a sub-million dollar hot-rod, but in terms of how it was to be designed, built, and be presented to the public. ANN has had unprecedented access to this program... even when everything seemed to be going straight to hell (we were aware of the Williams difficulties months before the ax fell and, to their credit, Raburn's folks never BS'ed us once over it). That access has revealed a growing unrest in the ranks of Eclipse over the war of hype that was being waged in the Very-Light-Jet market by companies that they felt were not meeting the standards they sought to set for themselves. Mind you, that's a pretty tough position to take... even somewhat arrogant, on the face of it... but the fact of the matter is that (win or lose), Eclipse has set the bar very high for itself... and is challenging others to do likewise -- in a way that makes it all very visible and very public. Call it "corporate accountability" on steroids, if you will.

ANN has had early access to a new section of the Eclipse web site (www.eclipseaviation.com) that will break the coming challenges and milestones into fine detail and show their progress to "God and everybody." Dozens of engineering and certification milestones are being detailed, publicly, with the proposed completion time... AND, as the project progresses, the ACTUAL completion time. Talk about airing your laundry in public... this is one of those challenges that could (easily) come back to bite the Eclipse folks, big-time... but it's a breath-taking challenge to an industry that seems to be too willing to ignore missed deadlines (how many times has the "XYZ2000" supposed to have been certified by now???) and is sure to stir things up in no small way... especially if Eclipse's challenge is taken up by other manufacturers. At the very least, it's going to be an exciting way to peak inside a dynamic aircraft development project, and the industry wags are sure to have a field day if target dates start slipping.

So... ANN readers are now invited to be the first to be directed to an interesting part of the Eclipse site that plainly invites one and all to "Track (Their) Progress." Formal announcements of this program will be made later today... but you get first dibs on checking it out.

Sure; it's something of a PR stunt, but it's a good one, in our opinion. It tends to eliminate some of the hype and allows interested parties to see, step by step, if the Eclipse program is meeting it's milestones (though we must note that NO aircraft certification project EVER finished on time or without difficulty) and just how involved this process REALLY is. We're looking forward to seeing this program progress... and also seeing if this kind of "transparent" aircraft development is adopted by anyone else hoping to compete in this oh-so-competitive market.

FMI: www.eclipseaviation.com