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The real explosion you will see in the next several years are these VLJ's. In the 1980's, the only people who flew on private jets were people who could drop 20,30,40,50 million dollars on an airplane, and then pay for ALL the maintenance, all the gas, staff the operation with pilots... Then came fractionals. And we had an explosion in that market. Lots of people can't pay $30 million for a Citation 10, but they can pay less than $2 million for a 1/16 share of a Citation 10. The same explosion will happen with VLJ's. At $1-2 million a piece, a 1/16 share of a VLJ could cost under $100,000. $300 an hour operating expenses. There will be another explosion in people who can fly on private jets.
Why are people so blinded by the VLJ's...Eclipse has made so many statements about how the VLJ is going to change everything and frankly I think they are wrong...it's a bunch of hype so far and nothing has convinced me that the Eclipse 500 is anything more spectacular than buying an airline ticket and taking an RJ, hell I here the RJ is more comfortable than the 500. Geez Eclipse has fibbed a lot about what to expect from the 500, remember the claim they made that it could be done for under a milllion? Remember the claim that it could be operated for the same cost as a full fare airline ticket? well now the jet is over 1.5 mil and operations costs are above what it costs to buy a first class ticket on the airlines. I can't wait for the real truth of the VLJ to come out and we will all see that once it finally peaks it's reluctant nose out of the testing world and into the real world...
http://eclipseaviationcritic.blogspot.com/ Thanks for the person who posted this link in the hangar forum my biggest suspicions of the Eclipse are becoming realities.