In my travels recently I ran across this rather interesting bird: N504EA, the third Eclipse 500 prototype airplane tethered behind a hangar at Double Eagle II in Albuquerque (KAEG). A short few years ago this airplane was the pride of the Eclipse fleet, a flight test prototype found in PR photos on many websites. 504EA was responsible for a lot of the testing that culminated in a type certificate for the Eclipse 500 fleet. Eclipse Aviation went bankrupt in early 2009 but the company is now emerging from ashes as Eclipse Aerospace in Albuquerque. Good luck, Eclipse!

 

 

 

Ouch! That is hard to see. I use to see alot of Eclipses around the Cutter Aviation hangar at ABQ. I never made it over there to actually take a look at their facilities, but I was sad to hear that the company went under.

USMCFLYR

 

Eclipse Aerospace is basically now only a group of owners who bought the assets of Eclipse Aviation from Chapter 7 bankruptcy for $40M (what a deal). They have 60 employees and have stabilized the parts trail enough to keep many of the existing 270 jets flying. They are still at Sunflower, and they have most of the same buildings although they had to close a number of previous repair stations. They opened a repair shop in Chicago and still have the old shops at Sunflower. They are far from dead, although the golden age of the VLJ is a bit of a farce at this point. A lot of people lost their hard earned money on the old venture. I have one friend who lost his deposits on five of them. The good news is the airplane probably is in as good shape as it ever was, EA is offering upgrades to the cockpit, FIKI, wing tanks, and the fire extinguishers. I would not feel unsafe in one.

 

I hadn't heard anything bad about the aircraft themselves. there was that one air-taxi in FL that wa banking on these right? I read an article in 'FLYING' some time ago about the rise and fall of the company. Certainly tough times.

USMCFLYR

 

DayJet unloaded 28 airplanes and the collapse of Eclipse contributed heavily to their bankruptcy. The EA500 jet did not have FIKI and it was restricted to VFR only flight, suffered some serious cost over runs, and had other technical problems. Some of the old DayJet planes in upgraded condition are for sale by Eclipse Aerospace now.

Wiki on DayJet
Wiki on Eclipse Aviation
Wiki on Eclipse History

 

Yeah - DayJet - that is who I was thinking of. VFR flight only? Could ANY air-taxi operation really work like this - especially in FL?

USMCFLYR

 

Did anyone actually think that a large fleet of underpowered, slow, tiny little no space to carry anything/ no payload capability jets were really the answer to any problems we are having in the aviation world today?

I talked know some of the guys who were setting up the training facilities in Denver at the UAL training center. They told me that the Eclipse had serious performance issues including slower than advertised cruise speed, extremely heavy control forces at speed and it simply had no legs whatsoever with any kind of payload on board.

I wouldn't want one of the little beggars if you gave it to me.

 

I have no need to stick up for the EA500, but its performance numbers are on par with comparable VLJs. The NBAA ifr range below is with a full payload of 700 lbs and is within 50 miles of the other jets. I would think there are more serious things to worry about when buying one of these aircraft than its performance. Lack of parts, lack of service centers, instability of the company, and a lack of training options to name a few. As fars as the pros and cons of the VLJ, that remains to be settled. Mustangs sell very well and the air taxi industry is doing ok using VLJs in some regions of the country.