Fast Company, Fast Jets, Fast Friends
The 2008 E-rrival just finished a couple of days ago... but its
influence will be felt throughout 'jet-dom' for quite the while.
This annual gathering of pilots and owners of the Eclipse 500
pocket-rocket VLJ occurs once a year or so for the community to
talk shop, learn the latest news and enjoy the comradery of like
minded flyers... but this year was different.
Unlike previous years, Eclipse was finally in serious
production, as aircraft number 200 saw daylight during this year's
festivities. The little dream jet that so many had hoped for, for
so long, and through so many travails, was finally a reality...
though nonetheless, still, a work in progress.
The Eclipse Aviation Customer E-rrival was an exciting weekend
-- featuring an address from Eclipse President and CEO Vern Raburn,
information sessions about owning, operating, and maintaining the
Eclipse 500, a hysterical luncheon speech from Rod Machado, tours
of the Eclipse facilities, simulator flights; a golf event,
reception and banquet; and family outings to New Mexico
attractions.
This E-rrival also marked the company's its 10-year anniversary
as some 300 customers and guests touched down in Albuquerque for
the three-day event, some of them actually arriving in their own
Eclipse 500 jets.
The event served as the opportunity to headline some major news
from Eclipse. Raburn told ANN that he was "thrilled" to have the
opportunity to introduce a new aircraft to the Eclipse Aviation
family – the Eclipse 400 single-engine jet. This is a
production version of the Eclipse Concept Jet (ECJ), which was
first revealed at EAA AirVenture 2007 and profiled exclusively by
Aero-TV. Previous Eclipse customers were the first allowed to place
deposits on the 1.35 million dollar Eclipse 400. Public deposits
will be accepted starting at EAA AirVenture 2008.
With good news came some not so good news...
Eclipse raised the price of the Eclipse 500 to $2,150,000.
Raburn noted that the increase became necessary for Eclipse to move
forward on a financially-sound basis. The reality is that the slope
of their production ramp has been slower than they had hoped, and
this has impacted their ability to deliver this airplane for the
cost originally targeted. While they may have pursued many other
alternatives to rectify this situation, they decided that now was
the time to take this action to lower their break even point and
move the company toward profitability in 2009.
By the time the weekend ended, a number of things were
certain... that in the Eclipse 400, there was a new jet in town,
that the company was on better footing than it had ever been, and
that the end appeared to be in sight for those remaining issues
needed for Eclipse to complete all the commitments it made for the
revolutionary Eclipse 500... the first of a new generation of
exciting jet aircraft.
Come Join Aero-TV As We
Zoom Through
The 2008 Eclipse 'E-rrival'
About Aero-TV: It's DEFINITELY Show
Time!!!!
OK, folks, here we go... we are NOW initiating the first
feature programming series for Aero-TV... we're going to take it
slow, but we're also going to try and be steady about this. DO
UNDERSTAND that this is the most complex media program we've ever
undertaken and what you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg...
but from here on out, we will be doing our best to educate,
inform, and entertain YOU about all aspects of the exciting worlds
of aviation and aerospace.
If you've been an observer of the media and associated media
industries over the last few years, it's not hard to mistake the
fact that a massive revolution is taking place. Old sources for
news and information are falling by the wayside, having to change
their modus operandi or risk obsolescence (or extinction).
Electronic media and print media are both under the assault of
progress, and the online world has been a cornerstone for
revolutionary change.
We've been ready to go for a while, but to be honest, there's so
much more to this program than we've alluded to, and so we've been
building and planning a massive new organization within ANN. That
said, we're hiring talented new people as
fast as we can find them (a far more difficult
task than we had imagined -- REALLY good people are hard to find),
and we're brainstorming at speeds that would make a deorbiting
Space Shuttle feel like a slug. Suffice it to say that we wanted to
do this right, rather than right-now, and that the development of
this program has been the most carefully pursued undertaking we've
ever undertaken.
E-I-C Note: The
complete feature shown above is embedded in this
story, with most of the slick and useful functionality
otherwise available on the main Aero-TV site (which will be
upgraded aggressively over the next few weeks). The ability to
embed a video on another web page is but one of the hundreds
of amazing little features that we've worked hard on, for many
months now, to implement in different phases of the initial
release of Aero-TV. It is, BY NO MEANS, the only way to enjoy
unaltered Aero-TV programming on other parts of the web... as we
have extensive plans for future functionality, but this
feature allows those with an interest in a specific Aero-TV News or
Feature program to embed it on a different web site, though we
must note that we reserve the right to forbid such use for those
sites or purposes that we do not feel fit in with the proper
mission of the Aero-News Network, Inc.
Webmasters or Administrators of well-trafficked aviation or
aerospace related sites, are welcome to contact the Publisher to
start conversations on how they may be able to leverage some of the
immense power of Aero-TV programming for their sites and
constituency by clicking the I Want Aero-TV For
MY Website! link.
Coming Soon!
Aero-TV Presents An EXTENSIVE Look At All The
Wonders of the 2008 AEA Convention, Takes A FLIGHT Under GARMIN SVT
Guidance and Comes Away Amazed!, And Takes A GOOD Look At
Honeywell's KFD840 and KNS770!, Checking Out the Cirrus SR20,
Seeing What It Takes to "Compete" As An AMT, Looks At The FAA
FAASTeam Program, Updates On The Garmin 495, Flying The Piper
Matrix, Hears What's Hot At Blue Mountain Avionics, Gets Some
GREAT Rotax Lessons, Gets Updated On ALL Things Lopresti, Has A FUN
Chat With Corkey Fornof, Sees What Happens When AMTs Compete,
Checks Out The Latest in Life-Raft Technologies, Checks Out
More "HIGH" Tech at I/ITSEC 2007, Hears From AOPA On Critical
Aviation Issues, Spills Some Juicy (and HIGHLY Detailed) Cirrus G3
Info, Scores A BUNCH of LSA Reports, and SO MUCH
MORE!!!!! Do NOT Miss Them!
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (04.16.24)
See All