Very Light Jets = Very Cool
As covered in a great article by Scott McCartney in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, this Fall we'll start to see the first Very Light Jets delivered to customers. If you like technology, and you travel, you'll want to learn more about this very cool shift taking place in the air travel industry.
For the past few years, Eclipse Aviation, backed by Bill Gates and others, has been attracting media attention for its pioneering new jet, the Eclipse 500. Traditional player Cessna and fellow startup Adam Aircraft (backed by Goldman Sachs and others) are also launching their first offerings in the VLJ category over the next 12 months.
Heavily written about in aviation magazines and by pilots like Rich Karlgaard of Forbes, VLJ's promise to revolutionize the way we travel - creating a new class of short-range "air taxis." VLJ's are also appealing to wealthy individuals who are willing to spend $1.5M for their own light jet instead of a share in a fractional jet ownership program like NetJets. The three companies have taken advanced orders for more than 3,100 VLJ's so far - before the first customers have even received their jets.
You need a subscription to the online version of the WSJ to read this past weekend's article, or access to the print copy, but if you're interested in VLJ's, it's worth the read. According to McCartney's article, he's the first person to fly all three of the new models (Eclipse 500, Adam A700 and Cessna Mustang) and his reviews are pretty cool (the Eclipse has the smallest cabin of the three, with an interior "20% smaller than the inside of a Honda Odyssey minivan," and sitting on the back seats of the Eclipse is like "sitting on a floor cushion at a Japanese restaurant").
The new VLJ's have a ton of technology packed into them, including new lighter, stronger composites and completely redesigned avionics. There are a million articles on the web about VLJ's - including others like Karlgaard who have written about their test flights - check it out.
