Yes, April Fool’s Day was quite some time ago, and …

No, this is not some kind of a joke.

Jet Ready, which operates out of Valencia, is planning to launch a new air taxi service using a fleet of Eclipse Aerospace’s reborn Total Eclipse 500s within the next 60 days and expects to be able offer fly-on-demand service to approximately 2,000 community airports by New Year’s Day.

The joker in the deck, at least for those of us living under the friendly skies of the Atlanta Tracon district, is that the Valencia in question is in Spain, not California, and the 2,000 community airports within range of Jet Ready’s home base are all in Europe. On the other hand, the aircraft are all made in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA and Jet Ready’s decision to go with them rather than Cessna Citation Mustangs or less glamorous but much cheaper turboprops speaks volumes about the how well Eclipse Aviation’s new owners and management team are doing.

Announcement of the upcoming service launch followed a successful joint Eclipse Aerospace/Jet Ready effort to regain European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification for the 500. (EASA certification for the original Eclipse 500 was granted in late 2008, but rescinded in June 2009 after Eclipse’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.)

According to most European General Aviation experts, the Eclipse E500 as originally configured would not have been legal to fly commercially in Europe even had the EASA not stripped it of its certification.

Commenting at the time of the 500’s initial certification, Conor Neill, Spanish managing director of Taxijet, a Spanish air taxi operator, predicted that upgrading the 500 from private flight to commercial operation certification would cost a minimum of $250,000 per aircraft and two years of research, development and retrofitting.

“But none of the four prospective buyers for Eclipse are looking at investing in this for some time,” Neill noted. “Their business plans call only for maintaining and servicing the existing fleet of 266 aircraft.”

Fortunately for current and future Eclipse owners, Neil was speaking before Mason Holland and his team of veteran aviation business executives, engineers, government relations experts and marketing professionals purchased what was left of Eclipse in summer 2009, holding the “grand reopening” of the Albuquerque headquarters and shop on September 4.

Though most of us, at least most of us sateside, will probably never get to fly on one of Jet Ready’s Eclipse 500s, it is interesting to document just how far the new Eclipse team has come to ready the 500 for EASA commercial operation certification in under eight months.

To start with, virtually the entire avionics system –- always a controversial item in original Eclipses — was chopped out of the cockpit and replaced by an Avio NG 1.5 package with standby attitude, altitude and airspeed indicators to provide pilots with some standard sources of operational data in the event of a total “glass-cabin” blackout.

Relatively minor EASA-requirement-only modifications included the installation of dual-diversity transponders, bias ply tires, and bilingual information placards. More seriously, EASA demanded significant modifications in the 500’s integrated computer software, diagnostic storage database and maintenance tracking and scheduling computer.

In other closer-to-home-news about Eclipse Aerospace first-ever accomplishments, the FAA has approved North American Jet’s request for permission to operate its fleet of ten Eclipse 500s with a single pilot in charter operations.

The FAA action was conditional on North American’s upgrading its fleet to the new Eclipse Aviation’s latest Total Eclipse standards, which include addition of AvioNG 1.5 avionics, an S-Tec autopilot coupled to a Garmin 400 GPS navigation system and upgraded systems to bring the aircraft up to certification in known icing specifications.

Charleston-based North American Jet, which on August 14, 2007 became the very first air service of any kind to operate an Eclipse 500 in revenue service, recently completed reconfiguring its ten E500s and has received FAA approval to fly its fleet of 10 in single-pilot mode for charter flights — a first for the five-seat 500.

With the initial ten aircraft now fully upgraded and in service, NAJ is actively looking for more first-gen 500s to purchase and process through Eclipse’s Albuquerque upgrade and refurbishment facility.

“As managers of the largest Eclipse Fleet in the world to date, we are extremely pleased with the newly upgraded Eclipse 500 aircraft,” commented Jud Wooddy, Managing Member of NAJet charter. “The cost to operate commercial charter flights is now reduced with the single pilot certification. In addition the safety of the aircraft is enhanced with the additional integrated autopilot, GPS and navigation systems.”

Or as Willie Nelson once said in an entirely different context, “If you had not have fallen, I would not have found you, angel flying too close to the ground. And I patched up your broken wing … I knew someday that you would fly away.”

Great song. Maybe it should be the official anthem of the visionary team that looked down at the broken pieces of what had once been the great small hope of American Aviation and saw, not a battered, grounded bird that would never fly again, but a proud survivor that would one day re-assume its rightful position at 40,000 feet.

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Suppose we said that 36 months from now you’ll be able to stroll down to your local “airplane mall” examine the cockpits and kick the tires on not two, three, or four — but seven seven brand new, fully certified, absolutely state-of-the-aviation-art Very Light Jets?

Would you believe us? Or would you double check the date of this entry to make sure it hadn’t been posted on April Fool’s Day. Or would you simply assume we’d gone gaga, round the bend, over the top, nutzo. Just plain crazy.

Isn’t the VLJ revolution on indefinite hold, perhaps forever? Didn’t most “experts” pronounce the VLJ industry dead after Eclipse and Epic imploded and so many other pretenders dropped out before even reaching the starting gate? Wasn’t it all over virtually before it really got started?

As recently as January 1, it would have been hard to argue with that assessment. But January 1 was yesterday. Today, tomorrow and the future look considerably different. The skies are definitely friendlier and the horizons brighter.

Back in 2005, in one of our very first articles, we said that “at least eight air frame makers” including Eclipse. Cessna and Embraer were designing and prototyping Very Light Jets.

So here are, almost five years later, and all three of those once futuristic personal jets are alive, well and being deployed and flown throughout the world. Yes, you read that right, all three of those aircraft. Even the much-maligned Eclipse 500, which has emerged, under its new owners, as the Total Eclipse … total meaning that it is now being offered as a fully evolved, $2.1 million, 21st Century VLJ complete with Flight Into Known Icing certification, GPS coupled autopilot, onboard color radar, electronic moving maps and Jeppesen eCharts.

Like Eclipse, the economic environment that brought the embryonic VLJ market — as well as the rest of the aviation industry — to its knees is also showing signs of significant resurrection.

USB Investment Research’s highly authoritative Business Jet Market Index hit 50% (on a scale of 100) in March, the first time it had reached that point in close to two years and a far cry from its low of 13% at the beginning of the recession.

More “bread-and-butter” evidence of the VLJ market’s revival comes from Cirrus Jet Sales Director Gary Black who reports that the company has gone from writing about five orders a month for its $1.72 million Vision SF50 VLJ during the last half of 2009 to selling a whopping 25 during January and February. We’ll do the math for you — that’s a 250 percent increase over November and December and brings the pre-sold Vision waiting list to just under 500.

Additional good news comes from Piper, which has been using the capital provided by its offshore investors to, in the words of CEO Steve Berger, “ramp up our engineering workforce by recruiting top professionals to provide the essential skills necessary to develop the PiperJet.”

Among those “top professionals” are the 38 engineers hired since January to work solely on the PiperJet. (The company plans to add 12 more high-level engineers to the PiperJet project as soon as it can find qualified candidates.)

Honda is also on a hiring binge aimed at bringing its prototype HondaJet airframes and their Honda/GE HF120 engines up to certification and production trim at more or less — given the abilities of various sub-contractors to deliver components — maximum speed.

As of early April, Honda was busy recruiting dozens of senior engineers (10 years-plus experience) and other aircraft design and production professionals to fill newly created positions in almost 20 key specialties ranging from avionic, electronic and electrical systems, to aerodynamics and performance, to manufacturing and quality control.

With its first conforming prototype — which Honda says is being built to “production-level quality standards” — scheduled to fly this summer and both the Vision and PiperJet not due to go into production until 2013, it would appear that Honda is the odds-on favorite to be the first company to put a fully certified, production VLJ on the flight line next to the Cessna Citation Mustang, the Embrarer Phenom 100 and the Eclipse 500.


But favorites don’t always win and Austria-based Diamond Aircraft which has been slowly, relatively silently, and apparently surely has been incubating its single-engine D-Jet VLJ “for the masses” — or at least those masses who can afford an approximately $1.6 million dollar aircraft — for almost a decade is still hoping to achieve certification (at least in Europe) and begin production of the D-Jet at its Ontario, Canada plant in early 2011.

Can Diamond beat Honda to the starting line? Maybe so. In just the last couple of economically challenged years Diamond has performed some pretty death-defying feats, most notably building and receiving EU approval of its Austro diesel-fueled aircraft engine less than a year after a major supplier of engines for its piston-powered models went suddenly bankrupt.

There’s also the Christian Dries factor. Diamond’s iconoclastic founder, CEO and guiding spirit has already announced plans to produce a military trainer based on the D-Jet and a twin-engined D-Jet spinoff able to cruise cross-continent at 50,000 feet.

So, barring an interruption by the start World War III, another total economic meltdown or some other act of God, it is very possible — though not, of course, certain — that you may have seven VLJs of various prices, configurations, and conceptual visions to choose from a mere 36 months from now.

But before you get overly excited, we must warn you that you won’t be able to simply fill out a credit app and fly one home — all seven manufacturers already have firm order backlogs exceeding at least two — and in most cases more — years of production.

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Mary Schwager of Examiner.com said it better that we ever could:

After the September 11th attacks the TSA, Transportation Security Administration, was created to toughen and regulate airline security. Now that agency gets the Dumb and Dumber award for its “new air travel prevent a bomber security proposal,” which goes something like this:

Huh? Will that really solve the problem? The bad guys will just detonate whatever they’re packing during takeoff, or in the middle of the in-flight movie. Meantime mothers and four year olds who have to go “potty RIGHT NOW” will be tortured during the last 60 minutes of a flight.

Not only is Mary right about this latest asinine in-flight anti-terrorism scheme, she’s understating the case. A truly well-trained terrorist would not only NOT wait until the last hour of a flight to detonate his bomb, he or she would do it almost immediately after the takeoff when the aircraft was in maximum climb attitude and completely full of jet fuel.

Apparently the dodos at TSA and the airlines have already forgotten that the carnage of 9/11 was largely caused by the terrorists ensuring that the aircraft flown into the Twin Towers were fully fueled flying bombs. Had the terrorists staged the attack towards the end of an inbound flight instead of the beginning of an outbound segment, the subsequent explosions would have been much smaller, the towers most likely would not have collapsed and many lives would have been saved.

Then there’s the other kneejerk reaction to the Christmas Day attack, a severe escalation of the war on carryon baggage. Far from the Washington Beltway’s bureaucratic and industry lobbyist power hubs, it’s hard to be sure who’s really pushing the insane idea that further restricting carryons will somehow magically thwart a suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his legs or hidden in his shoe.

This idea, bizarre as it sounds, could have come from regulatory airheads or airline accountants, but if we had to guess we’d bet on the airlines, since they’re the “stakeholder” with the best motive. For the airlines, fewer carryons means faster stuffing and emptying of their flying sardine cans, faster loading and unloading means quicker turnaround times, which can add up to more flight segments per day for both crews and aircraft. Or, to put it in business school jargon, less carryon luggage improves equipment utilization efficiency and bottomline profits.

There’s also the flip side of the coin, fewer and smaller carryon bags equals more checked bags and checked bags have become a major cash cow for many airlines.

And meanwhile, God help us all — frequent and infrequent fliers alike — precious little is being said about the reality of attacks like that perpetrated on Christmas Day: Once explosive material is allowed on an aircraft the only thing that can stop a disaster is good luck or a failure of the would-be bomber’s nerve.

Which brings us full circle to a point this blog has — on and off — been trying to make since its inception: Scheduled air travel on major air carriers ain’t what it used to be.

Not because it’s unsafe, the sky isn’t falling here. The terrorist attempt failed. The Northwest pilots who recently overflew their destination by 150 miles because they were busy using their laptops to play video games or look at porn or do something else more interesting than flying a jetliner, didn’t — like their spiritual antecedents at Northwest — kill anyone.

But all these things do levy a heavy toll on scheduled-carrier passengers. Virtually every inflight “incident” results in delayed arrivals — delays that can total many, many hours if a plane is diverted to an alternate airport so the police can break down a restroom door to toss some poor diarrhea sufferer up against the wall. Substantial delays when a crew misses the airport and has to turn back and try again. Long delays occasioned by individual FBI interviews of every passenger on a flight where something unusual — like the recent case where a flight crew reported that two passengers were studying suicide bombing training tapes on a laptop when they were actually watching a Hollywood movie — occurred.

And let us not forget that comical, rather than sinister, headline-grabbing Christmas season flight “incident” in which Ivana Trump was dragged off a scheduled flight because she dared complain about a couple of ill-behaved brats running amok up and down the aircraft aisles. (Hey, hey, TSA, shouldn’t it have been the kids’ parents you snatched that day?)

OK. No biggie here. Ivana can afford to buy herself out of virtually any trouble she’s clever enough to get into and most of us who fly a lot have learned to live with the fact that the rules of civilized behavior are rarely enforced in regard to annoying children and their willfully deaf, dumb and arrogant parents.

But the point is that when the cops take someone off a plane, they usually do it before the other passengers are allowed to deplane. If the person being taken into custody objects strenuously, which is usually the case, the process can eat up a reasonable amount of clock time.

End result? Inconvenience, annoyance and possible missed connections for the innocent flystanders.

To conclude with another point we’ve tried hard to make from the inception of this blog: You can avoid a huge percentage of the hassles of 21st Century scheduled carrier travel — everything from the gridlocked freeways leading to many international airports, to delays caused by cattle-car security checks, to screaming child syndrome — by using an air taxi service for your short and mid-range travel needs.

To put it another way, to cut the crap, take the cab.

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On the face of it, the assertion that introducing a nearly $3 million twin-jet aircraft shortly before the start of the nation’s worst recession in 80 years would be a brilliant marketing move is absurd. But it was.

Of course, executives at Cessna didn’t know a crash was coming five or six years ago when they launched the R&D program that would result in the Citation Mustang 510 ’s (aka Mustang) 2007 deployment. Likewise, they probably couldn’t tell you what decisions they might have made differently if they had known that a global economic wind shear was waiting just beyond the end of the aircraft’s development schedule.

Perhaps fortunately, the brass at Cessna who green-lighted the Mustang project didn’t — couldn’t — foresee the unfriendly economic skies looming four or five years in the future. Not being crystal-ball gazers, they pushed full-speed ahead in an attempt to win first “street-legal-VLJ” bragging rights over the Eclipse 500. Such is the microdot-sized synopsis of the Mustang, certified for unlimited operation in 60 countries, and already in service in many of them.

By the time this appears on AirTaxiFlights.com more than 250 Mustangs will have been delivered — a very impressive number indeed. Impressive because we interviewed Cessna program manager David Dell (Cessna Mustang Covers The Globe) right around the aircraft’s first birthday and he told us Cessna had already delivered 55 — an average of just a bit more than one per week in the 12 pre-recession months after its launch.

Doing the really tough math (250 minus 55, duh), we find that Cessna has delivered 195 Mustangs between April 2008 and November 2009 … let’s see … that’s roughly 2.3 per week in the teeth of what many economists believe has been much more of a depression than a recession.

To make a way-over-the-top understatement, that ain’t too shabby a record. Particularly in a general aviation market that saw aircraft sales through the first three quarters of 2009 plummet almost 50 percent ( 48.9% to be exact, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association) below those of the same period in 2008. (Which, with new aircraft deliveries down more than 7 percent from 2007, was hardly a banner year itself.)

How well has the world’s first (lest we forget it, Cessna did win those aforementioned bragging rights) VLJ really been doing? Well enough for Forbes Magazine to headline a September article Cessna’s Mustang Refutes The Decline Of Capitalism.

“New Mustangs go out the door for $2.8 million,” Forbes’ Rich Karlgaard wrote. “In a terrible year for new jet sales, the entry-level Mustang has been an outlier.”

While there are numerous definitions, ranging from the very obscure to the even more obscure, for the word “outlier,” we conjecture Forbes is using it to infer “an extreme deviation from the mean.” In other words, surmising that our speculation is correct, Forbes is rather tortuously saying that the Mustang’s reasonably robust sales make it a standout in the general aviation field at a time when most other recreational and business aircraft, including Cessna’s non-Mustang models, are selling poorly.

So what makes the Mustang such an outlier? To start with, down at the baseline, it’s a great airplane to fly and a stellar performer at the gas pump.

“The Mustang feels like a small business jet, whereas the Eclipse felt like a small twin piston airplane,” Karlgaard reported after taking one for a spin around the block. “It is a very easy plane to fly, yet it is as stable as a larger jet … if the Mustang flies with a full cabin [six people including pilot(s) and passengers], its fuel efficiency at 41,000 feet rivals a Honda Accord with a solo driver at 70mph.”

There’s also the matter of genetics. For more than 80 years, Cessna has bringing military, pleasure and corporate aircraft to market with a minimal amount of fuss, bother and “redos” and a maximum amount of commercial success. Rooted in this environment the Mustang, pardon the pun, flew through its research, development, conforming prototype and certification stages on time and within budget and arrived in its new owners’ hangers fully equipped with all the avionics, communications, comfort and convenience goodies Cessna had promised them.

One final factor. Good times or bad, boom or bust, bull market or bear, inflation, deflation or stagnation, America and its sadly diminished industrial base of core manufacturers now lives, for better or worse, in a global economy.

Figuratively speaking, the Mustang’s designers didn’t start with the legendary clean sheet of paper. What they started with was a sheet of paper with the words “world aircraft” written on it in huge, underlined letters. Given this mandate, it’s no surprise that the first Mustangs to go into air taxi service were based in London. Or that CEO Haytham Azhari of Open Sky Aviation, which operates Mustangs between Beruit, Lebanon’s Rafic Hariri Airport and fields in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, called the aircraft “excellently suited to the Middle East.”

As “excellently suited” for operations in London and Lebanon as it is for those in L.A. and Louisville, it’s no surprise that the Mustang is the only business aircraft in the Cessna line with a roughly 50-50 ratio of domestic to off-shore sales. Cessna’s other models don’t have nearly as high a percentage of foreign sales in their order books, which is undoubtedly a major reason why those books are relatively lean while the Mustang’s order book is quite well nourished considering today’s economic climate.

Which all goes to prove at least one old adage, “build a better three-million-dollar mousetrap and the whole wide world will beat a path to your door.”

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Automobile sales at Honda, the only one of Japan’s Big Three automakers to end its lastest fiscal year in the black, are down and its 2009 third-quarter profits are off 56 percent from Q3 2008, but the company is still bullish — aggressively bullish — on the HondaJet.

Having recently completed an FAA Interim Type Certification Board Meeting and successfully conducted key tests of the twin-jet VLJ’s rejected take-off braking performance, crew and-cabin-seat crashworthiness and other critical structural systems, Honda says development and production of a conforming prototype is on schedule for a maiden flight early next year.

According to Honda Aircraft Company President & CEO Michimasa Fujino, construction of the conforming prototype’s fuselage, wing, empennage, landing gear, and other major structural components was completed in September and FAA-monitored assembly of the prototype is now underway at HondaJet’s world headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina.

That’s the good news.

What’s the bad news?

There isn’t any, but there is some news that’s even better.

The better news is that Honda, despite the overall state of the U.S. and global economy and dismal condition of the aviation industry in particular, has not only kept the Hondajet program going at full speed, it has significantly upgraded it with major investments in more advanced technology, expanded U.S.-based production facilities and strategic initiatives designed to guarantee HondaJet owners and pilots world-class service and support.

Item: Honda recently completed and “flew” its state-of-the-art, Honda-designed Advanced Systems Integration Test Facility, which encompasses both a “real” aircraft test lab and something called a Real-time Test and Simulation System (RTSS).

To use Honda’s words, the RTSS “incorporates actual aircraft systems hardware and software, installed in a spatially-representative manner, and interconnected with actual aircraft electrical harnesses. The RTSS provides systems, environmental and aerodynamic simulation, supported by dSPACE® real-time hardware and Honda-developed high-fidelity 6-DOF aerodynamic and real-time engine models.”

Translated into English, we believe that means it’s a simulator that blurs the line between virtual and reality into near invisibility.

“The HondaJet ASITF has successfully integrated the best attributes of a systems test lab, engineering simulator, and ‘Iron Bird’ in one facility,” said Fujino. “This facility allows thorough evaluation of all systems integration for enhanced aircraft safety and will significantly support accelerated development of both systems and conforming aircraft.”

Item: Honda has opened its checkbook even further by making massive upgrades to the HondaJet’s original avionics suite. The conforming prototype will now fly off with a glass flight deck featuring three 14-inch landscape-format displays, dual control-and-flight-plan-entry touch screens, satellite weather, graphical synoptics, split-screen MFD capability, and — optionally on production models — Synthetic Vision.

Based on a Honda-specific variant of Garmin’s next-generation G3000 system, the HondaJet Avionics Suite “represents a significant enhancement in both capability and user experience.” Fujino said. “The large-format displays, advanced features, and intuitive touch-screen multi-function controllers provide a low-workload user interface that is ideally suited to our high-performance light jet aircraft.”

Item: Honda is continuing to invest heavily — very heavily — in both its still-under-construction 250,000 square foot Greensboro production facility and its fully operational 187,000 square foot R&D lab.

A recently added five-axis CNC milling machine (typical high-end CNC units can only rotate material on three axis) that provides, Honda says, “maximum efficiency and the highest quality in the creation of detail parts for conforming aircraft fabrication” is now in service and a structural test system (STS) designed exclusively for the HondaJet is nearing completion.

Based on MTS FlexTest computer technology, the STS will use 61 hydraulic load-simulating actuators, a 2,600-channel data-acquisition system and a hot-and-wet environmental simulation chamber to evaluate static and fatigue strength and stress levels under numerous in-flight and on-the-ground scenarios.

Item: Honda recently unveiled a ground-breaking program designed to take the sticker-shock out of scheduled maintenance costs.

Customizable to provide owners with a fixed hourly maintenance rate based on their individual usage patterns, the three-tiered Flight Ready program — powered in part by a logistical partnership between Honda and FedeX — also promises to provide HondaJet operators around the world with virtually on-demand factory parts and authorized service.

So much for the progress reports, now for the billion-dollar question. Will the $3.9 million HondaJet be the high-flying success Honda clearly expects it to be?

Will corporations and well-healed professionals line up to buy a $3.9 million VLJ even if, as some analysts predict, the economic skies stay gray for another two, three or even five years? Is Honda’s investment — surely near or over the billion buck border by this point — in high-performance, luxury, personal air transport going to pay off?

Nobody really knows, of course, but from our point of view, the answer to all those questions is a resounding “yes.”

With substantial deposits for more than 100 HondaJets already in the bank, Honda spokesman Steve Keeney says “demand has been so strong that our original workforce estimate may double” by the time the aircraft goes into production. Even today, almost certainly more than a year before HondaJet S/N 00001 is delivered, Greensboro is employing 15 percent more people than were initially expected to be working on site at the start of production.

Another good omen for the HondaJet is the reassuring performance of its closest competitors, the $3.6 million Embraer Phenom 100 and the $2.8 million Cessna Citation Mustang. The Phenom, despite having slightly higher weight and operating costs than early VLJ proponents envisioned for the class, is expected to hit 100 sales in 2009, its first real year of production (two planes were delivered in December 2008.) As for the Mustang, which in 2006 became the first VLJ to earn FAA certification, all it’s done is become what is arguably the brightest star in the business aviation skies.

We’ll talk about the Mustang’s international success story in the next post. In the meantime, visit HondaJet.com and be prepared to drool.

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“Welcome to OpenAir, please watch your step while boarding the aircraft.”

Or, if you’re really busy viewing This Week In The NFL on your Crackberry or trying to create a last-minute iPod playlist on the fly, you can pretty much ignore the “watch your step” part. After all, OpenAir owner Michael Klein, who moonlights — or more accurately daylights — as an ankle surgeon, can always unstrap himself from the pilot seat to render assistance if you stumble and fall.

One caveat: Since the cost of having Dr. Klein shrink wrap your sprained ankle in an Ace bandage might very well be two or three times the price of having Air Taxi Operator Klein fly you from just about any Point A to pretty much every Point B between Texas and Maine, you might want to watch your step after all.

Just kidding. You should always watch your step when boarding or exiting any aircraft, even if the pilot is a physician, which Mike Klein really is. Also, with OpenAir now offering service to approximately 3,000 communities throughout the Mid-Atlantic, East Coast, Gulf Coast and Mid-South regions, the odds of Dr. Klein occupying the left seat on your flight are much lower today than they were when OpenAir launched in January 2007.

In addition to being a physician, a pilot and an aviation entrepreneur, Mike Klein could also be described as a visionary if it weren’t for the unpleasant fact that the word “visionary” has acquired — with some justification — a connotation blacker than a lunar eclipse in the air taxi field. So let’s just say Dr. K thinks outside the cockpit, which, happily, inspired him to redefine “fly-on-demand” to be more than just a marketing slogan.

Specifically, he built suburban Washington-based OpenAir around a literal interpretation of the words “on demand,” looking at them the way a “strict constructionist” judge looks at the United States Constitution. OpenAir does not offer its fly-on-demand service during business hours only. It does not frame fly-on-demand within a polymer window that might stretch for three or four hours on either side of a passenger’s desired departure time. What OpenAir does do, in its own words, is “allow you to fly wherever, whenever.”

Actually, that last statement isn’t quite true. “You” don’t even have to travel to take advantage of OpenAir’s 24/7/365 fly-on-demand service. If you’ve got an emergency cargo shipment — medical supplies, computer repair parts, etc. — that have to get from one rural or remote community to another without sitting in an airport package room, waiting for plane changes, or taking a long, grid-locked drive to or from a major airport, OpenAir will have it on its way within an hour.

That this dedication to doing things the customer’s way has earned OpenAir membership in the very exclusive club of air taxi companies which made a profit on their very first flight and have remained in the black ever since, comes as no surprise to many aviation economists.

As Professor Joakim Karlsson, who holds both Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics (MIT) and Master of Arts in Economics (University of New Hampshire) degrees, says “the air taxi industry was postulated on the idea of providing travelers, particularly business travelers, with a significantly advantageous alternative to the major airport/major carrier model. In far too many cases, for any number of reasons, some internal and some beyond the control of the operators, this failed to happen. In too many cases the only real benefit to the traveler was the utilization of more conveniently sited airports. That single advantage in and of itself was not, in retrospect, enough to entice many fliers to change the air travel habits of a lifetime.”

Karlsson points out that many air-taxi carriers that failed were guilty of committing some of the same sins common to scheduled carriers: poor scheduling, counter-intuitive booking and pricing procedures, and lackadaisical customer communications.

“For business travelers, price is not necessarily as major a driver as efficiency and productivity,” he said. “Once carriers like DayJet started telling customers that the ‘per seat’ price would be one amount for a two-hour departure window, another amount for a four-hour departure window, and a third amount if the aircraft stopped to pickup or discharge another passenger enroute they were doomed. They were demanding that customers consider as many options and make as many decisions prior to a 90-mile intrastate air taxi flight as they would for a cross-country trip.”

Travelers on OpenAir face no such logistical impediments. Rates on one of OpenAir’s seven all-weather, known-icing-certified Cirrus SR22-GTS airplanes are a flat $595 per flight hour for one to three passengers and $25 per waiting hour (maximum wait charge is $100) for same-day return flights. Other user-friendly options include prepaid block-time discounts, door-to-door limo-aircraft-limo service, “empty-leg” specials and pre-packaged New York Theater, Atlantic City Casino and Spa Indulgence outings.

The success of OpenAir and scores of other thoughtfully conceived, well-managed air taxi services from Atlanta to Athens is proof positive that air taxi service, as most of us have believed all along, is an idea whose time has come — but only if and when it’s implemented with 100 percent commitment to changing the air-travel culture to benefit the traveler, not the carrier.

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It’s so sweet it’s almost like a song … White collared canines with bulging briefcases, tennis-togged cats with black graphite racquets… high-flying hamsters with handbags by Hermes, hip-hopping iguanas with iPods on strings… these are a few… a few of… a few of Pet Airways favorite things.

Yes, it’s finally happened. After nearly five years of strategizing, fund raising, FAA-negotiating, and running aircraft from Cessna 172s to Lear 60s past focus group after focus group of poodles and parakeets, pot-bellied pigs and pugs, manxes and minks, scent hounds and shepherds, and, last but not least, owners, breeders and handlers of every nationality and description, Pet Airways has taken wing.

Despite what many may think, Pet Airways, which offers “per-seat” (per carrier, actually) priced service to five community airports in major markets including New York, L.A. and Chicago, is not in the business of transporting animals and their two-legged pets. Pet Airways is strictly an animal-only carrier whose mission is to provide its clientele with the same level of single–cabin, amenity rich service enjoyed by humanoid executive and recreational air taxi passengers.

Actually, to be brutally honest, the amenities field isn’t quite level. Fido, Fluffy and Pork Chop may well be getting a bit better service than passengers on more traditional people-oriented air-taxi flights.

Before boarding one of Pet Air’s fully pressurized and luxuriously customized, 19-passenger (when configured for humans) Beech 1900 twin-engine turbo-prop ExecLiners, canine, feline and other furred, finned or feathered fliers are greeted by their flight crew in an airport VIP Lounge and given ample opportunity for a pre-flight snack, drink or — most important — potty break.

Once on board, each passenger receives individual attention from a specially trained corps of flight attendants who assist in getting guests comfortably and safely buckled into Pet Air’s proprietary animal-carrier restraint system and, presumably, dispense such airline staples as mini-pillows and catnip mice.

During flight, pilots keep passengers informed about estimated time of arrival, weather conditions en route, and ground transportation at destination airports. They also provide updated scores of major sporting events such as the IFCC (International Frisbee Catching Championship) that may be underway.

At least we think they do … AirTaxiFlights.com officially asked Pet Air for a press evaluation flight, but our request was rejected on the grounds that none of our staff members were properly equipped with paws, hooves or trotters.

The brainchild of husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Alysa Binder and Dan Wiesel, Pet Air began — like many 21st Century air taxi services — as a dream based on a nightmare. The nightmare being that traveling on scheduled carriers — for man, woman, beast, or checked suitcase — is continually becoming more of a fight than a flight. A battle about inconvenient schedules, late arrivals, lost baggage, disappearing customer and passenger service and — above all — outrageous price increases not-at-all cleverly disguised as BS surcharges.

Or, as Binder and Wiesel’s Pet Air prospectus probably pointed out, there are many flight segments where some airlines charge higher fares for the three-pound Chihuahua under the seat than they do for the 250-pound dog lover in the seat.

The situation is even worse for pets — even relatively small ones — forced to fly in the cargo hold because they are a.) a tad overly large to meet the airlines’ ridiculously undersized (much smaller than, say, a roll-on suitcase) pet-carrier requirements b.) the airline has already booked its maximum number of cabin-class pets (usually two or three) or c.) the airline is one of the increasing number of major carriers that refuse to transport pets in the cabin at all.

United Airlines, which is pretty much typical of most airlines in this area, was charging humans $47 to fly from Los Angeles to Las Vegas as this was being written in mid-July. The fare for Chihuahuas accommodated under a seat in the cabin was more than 200 percent higher ($125) and the rate for pets unfortunate enough to have to travel rough — and in danger of “early termination” by a pilot forgetting to enable the “dead dog” switch — in the baggage compartment was $250.

Pet Air, by comparison, would transport the same pet in main cabin ease and luxury, complete with a flight attendant courtesy visit at least once each 15 minutes and guaranteed freedom from listening to human children shriek, all the way from L.A. to New York — an additional 2,000 air miles — for the same $250.

Admittedly, Pet Air isn’t for everyone. Some animals prefer to keep all four feet planted firmly on the ground. Others simply won’t go anywhere they can’t turn on their cell and respond to texts and tweets. Also, in these challenging economic times many animals that can afford Pet Air fares for their own vacation can’t handle the additional expense of booking their pets on a people carrier or hiring a human-care service to feed and water them at home.

Fortunately for the Binder-Wiesel family and pet owners from coast to coast, there still seem to be enough inveterate animal travelers to keep Pet Air flying high. As of now, all five of its Execliners are booked solid two months in advance.

And that’s really something to crow (or bark, or yowl, or grunt) about!

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You can’t exactly call it a mothball fleet because most — if not all — of the 260-odd Eclipse 500s built and delivered before the company quit production are still in regular use, doing — more or less, considering the “unfinished” status of some of the avionics — exactly what they were designed to do.

Doing it rather well, as far as that goes.

Still, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court considering the matter of Eclipse Aviation’s liquidation is at some point going to have to resolve the matter of who gets what’s left of the spoils — intellectual property such as design and engineering documents, patents for crucial parts, tooling, etc. It’s a decision that’s likely to have a profound effect on the viability of the existing fleet over the years, and perhaps decades, ahead.

No one ever said that navigating Eclipse through dark and moneyless skies would be easy, but it began to look substantially more difficult last week with the apparent collapse and bankruptcy of Rolfe Pieper’s Luxembourg-based ETIRIC (European Technology and Investment Research Center) amidst indictments, lawsuits and counter lawsuits charging post-Vern Rayburn managers of Eclipse with everything from misappropriating customers’ deposits on new aircraft to pay off their own loans to Eclipse, to making unfounded promises of new financing being in the pipeline.

Pieper, who responded to the charges by telling European media that “I’m not worried. I just watch out” is the magic money man who forced Raburn out of Eclipse with sometimes conflicting promises to a.)continue producing Eclipse 500s in the U.S. after refinancing the company with capital from his own private investment group or b.) relocate it to the former Soviet Union, where production would be financed by the Russian government and state bank, which Pieper avowed, were both firmly under the virtually dictatorial control of his bud, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Note: Evidence introduced in a February 2009 filing to force Eclipse out of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and into a Chapter 7 proceeding indicated that the Russian state bank in question, Vnesheconombank (VEB), was itself insolvent at the time Pieper was touting its willingness to dump roughly $205 million (USD) into Eclipse. (The motion to convert Eclipse’s Chapter 11 filing into Chapter 7, which virtually guarantees the company will be liquidated, was tentatively approved by the court on March 4.)

Edgy — to use as non-judgmental a word as possible — financial machinations are hardly news in today’s economy, but that doesn’t stop them from drawing generally good audience ratings in the reality show of life. Unfortunately, the latest revelations do nothing for existing Eclipse owners and operators wondering if their aircraft will a.) ever be upgradeable to the advanced GPS performance standards and known-icing certification they were promised when they placed their orders and b.) whether the resale value curve of their 500 will be more like that of a 1961 Corvette than it will that of a 1961 Ford Falcon.

Offering hope, on the other hand, are four groups vying for court approval to pick up the pieces and attempt to bring order out of the Eclipse chaos. The three considered most likely to succeed are an effort by air-taxi operator Linear Air, a co-op supported by management company Jet-Alliance and several 500 owners, and an owner/investor partnership suggested by Harlow Aerostructures CEO Phillip Friedman. (The fourth contender is believed to out of the running due to close ties with Roel Pieper. )

Since we discussed Linear’s non-profit, co-op Eclipse Services and Support LLC initiative in a previous post, we’ll concentrate on the other two proposals here.

The most intriguing of all the Eclipse recovery plans is Friedman’s brainchild, New Eclipse Aviation LLC (NEA), which envisions nothing less than the eventual restoration of Eclipse as an independent manufacturer of brand new, state-of-the-art VLJs.

Friedman’s plan, while attractive in that it provides for “at-cost” (approximately $300,000 for complete GPS and glass cockpit makeovers) upgrades, also requires that existing owners invest $150,000 (plus annual support fees) in New Eclipse to qualify for the discounted upgrades.

Looked at objectively, the NEA plan — if fully realized — probably offers the most potential benefits to owners. It would provide for relatively low-cost aircraft upgrades, thus increasingly functionality and resale value, and an owner’s investment in New Eclipse could become highly profitable if the company eventually went into production successfully.

“Fully realizing” a plan, however, is even harder in commercial aviation than in most fields of endeavor. Any breakdowns along the way — such as the failure of a large number of current owners to sign on — could have a catastrophic effect on the financial wind between New Eclipse’s wings.

Without naming names, but perhaps mindful of New Eclipse’s buy-in requirements, the Eclipse Owners Group (EOG) effort, championed by Jet-Alliance CEO Randall P. Sanada and Eclipse owner David Green, has stated that it intends to try and acquire Eclipse’s remaining assets because proposals from some of the other suitors “are shortsighted and place undue burdens on an already overtaxed customer base.”

Far more modest than Friedman’s “resurrection” plan, the EOG’s stated goal is obtaining “full control of the serviceability, modification and long-term reliability” of the existing Eclipse fleet. EOG also put at least a few points on the scoreboard when it signed a letter of intent with Hawker Beechcraft in which the latter contracted to provide service and upgrade support to current Eclipse owners on an ad hoc basis. (The points may or may not stay on the board dependent on whether the original non-binding agreement is eventually superseded by a binding one.)

Bottomline is that with a liquidation auction for Eclipse’s bones anywhere (depending on which predictions you chose to believe) from days to an eternity away, the prospects for existing Eclipse owners isn’t nearly as dark as it could be.

Despite being not quite fuly formed, the embryonic 500 has proven to an efficient, economical and reliable performer for private, small corporation and air-taxi operators. With the cost of new light and very light aircraft constantly escalating by hundreds of thousands of dollars, the value proposition — and the potential vendor and outfitter profit potential — in upgrading the existing Eclipse fleet has increased proportionally.

Sooner or later some entrepreneurial entity, either one of the groups described above or another not yet on the horizon, is almost sure to come forward and provide the Bondo needed to fill the chinks in the Eclipse 500’s armor.

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It’s called, as you undoubtedly know by now, the Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) and it would, according to its many opponents in Congress, state governments and the general-aviation industry, place the same crown of costly post-9/11 security thorns already borne by scheduled airlines firmly upon the heads of corporate aircraft owners, air freight companies and community airport operators.

Michigan GOP Congressman Vernon Ehlers calls it “a prime example of a stupid rule.”

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin says it imposes “numerous unnecessary requirements on both airports and aircraft operators that are already struggling in the wake of both national and industry economic crisis.”

It is, claims House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello (D-Ill) “a solution in search of a problem.”

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) says it’s “an unreasonably expansive and intrusive response to an undocumented and unproven security threat.”

And as far as National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) President Ed Bolen is concerned “this proposal completely misses the mark.”

The truth is the that the Transportation Security Administration’s proposed Large Aircraft Security Program has created a firestorm of protest. Of the approximately 5,000 public comments registered with the TSA before the flood of “incoming” was terminated February 27, the “nays” vastly outweighed the “yeas” in both quantity and VIPness.

In other words, none of the few submissions favoring the LASP had anywhere near the political clout of the 23-page treatise filed against it by a coalition of seven Republican members of Congress, all of whom, by dint of political philosophy and/or party affiliation, tend to be bullish on any proposal packaged in a “national security” wrapper.

If it sounds to you like the LASP has few friends, you’ve just passed the hearing test. Outside the agency that created it, public support for the proposal is slim to anorexic. But then, it probably doesn’t need many allies.

Since the day it was spawned in the aftermath of 9/11, the TSA has generally gotten everything it wanted, with or without enthusiastic support from members of Congress — some of whom, like Sen. Ted Kennedy, have been inexplicably bounced from flights by its perhaps overly politicized computers. And while President Obama undoubtedly views quasi-constitutional regulations a bit differently than former President Bush, he’s unlikely to squander political capital this early in his administration by opposing what is being touted by the TSA as “a strong common framework for security that will reduce risk.”

Besides, the TSA craftily side-stepped the one issue that might cause any recession-era president to veto alleged nation security measures by putting virtually the entire just-under-$2 billion (TSA estimated) burden of complying with LASP on GA aircraft operators and local airport authorities.

Since every action – particularly every political action — has a reaction, there are, of course, certain air-transport stakeholders who do potentially stand to benefit if the LASP rules go into effect, as now proposed, in June. Members of the airline and air taxi industry, for example, can be forgiven for inwardly cheering their heads off and their lungs out in favor of the TSA’s position as they stand publicly silent on the sidelines of the debate.

Like sex appeal, the LASP is largely about weight. It only applies to aircraft with a maximum takeoff weight above 12,500 pounds and airports capable of being used by such middleweights. If adopted, the potential benefit to airlines and air taxies is obvious and identical. By raising the operating costs of most business-class jets and turboprops it could force executive travelers out of their Lears, Gulfstreams and Citations and onto commercial airline or air taxi flights. (Note: Of all aircraft now being used, or considered as likely future candidates, for air-taxi service only the Embraer Phenom 300 tops the LASP weight limit.)

As currently structured, LASP would cover about 15,000 business-class aircraft and more than 320 airports not served by scheduled airlines. It would require airline pilot-level screening of all flight crew members, passenger screening through two TSA “watch” lists and establishment of mandated operator security programs requiring specially trained personnel.

Aircraft operators would also be required to create and enforce detailed contingency plans for everything from denying boarding to anyone on the TSA no-fly list, to validating name matches, to ensuring that passengers don’t smuggle articles newly prohibited by LASP — like tools — onto the business aircraft taking them to the job where the tools will be needed.

Operators of airports falling under the LASP’s heel (officially described as DOT-defined reliever airports or public or private airports that regular serve scheduled or public charter operations of aircraft above the weight limit) will have to hire officially designated airport security coordinators, hire or retrain law-enforcement personnel, create TSA-mandated record retention programs, devise procedures for handling and protecting undefined “sensitive security information,” and redefine “incidence-management procedures” to suit the whims of Washington bureaucrats.

No wonder the American Association of Airport Executives became so livid at the introduction of the proposal that it accused the TSA of violating everything from the Privacy Act of 1974, to the Unfunded Mandate Act of 1995, to the Second and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

Be that as it may, the odds favor the imposition of some version of the LASP that will give at least a slight advantage to air taxi operators regardless of how it is modified to pacify some of its critics.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that many believe that LASP is only a stalking horse for a UASP (Universal Aircraft Security Program) that will impose similar restrictions and requirements on every heavier-or-lighter-than-air flying machine down to Stearman bi-planes, Piper Cub J3s (max. takeoff weight: 1220 pounds) and the Goodyear blimp.

The TSA, they point out, has historically been as preoccupied with empire building as national security and needs to constantly invent new jobs and programs if it wishes to take maximum advantage of the unlimited staffing power given to it by Congress.

Is the theory that the TSA eventually intends to morph LASP into UASP based in reality or paranoia?

Frankly, we don’t have a clue.

But we do have some admittedly circumstantial evidence.

In November, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued new regulations requiring “any aircraft, other than government or military, which are not engaged in carrying passengers or cargo for compensation” to abide by scheduled-airline-level aircraft and passenger screening and notification rules prior to entering or leaving the country.

Lest anyone misunderstand the meaning of “any aircraft, other than govenrment and military, etc.” the Bureau provided an even more specific definition: Private aircraft arriving in and departing from the United States, regardless of size or weight.

And what does that have to do with LASP? Not much, except that both LASP and the new CBP regulations were published at virtually the same time and sound like they were written by the same people based on the same real or imagined assumptions.

One other “coincidence.” The Transportation Security Administration and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection are both among the most favored offspring of the Department of Homeland Security.

Reality or paranoia? You be the judge.

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Are the air taxi good times really over for good almost before they got started?

Impossible.

Are they over for the next ten years?

Almost certainly not.

The next five years?

Unlikely.

How long then?

According to a surprisingly large number of industry insiders, the good times are not only not over, they’re about to get rolling in earnest.

“This country didn’t just have an economic meltdown; it has had an airline meltdown,” says Andrew Schmertz , who earlier this month put a substantial sum of money where his mouth is by launching Hopscotch Air to provide on-demand air taxi service between metropolitan New York and hundreds of mid-Atlantic and New England community airports.

“Airlines are reducing and, in some cases, canceling service along many routes … the (traveling public) is clamoring for a solution to the airline mess,” Schmertz said. “People still need to fly and time is still money.”

Linear Air CEO Bill Herp who, when interviewed by AirTaxiFlights.com last September believed there was “a big opportunity in efficiently and economically connecting people who live and work near major metro areas with their business interests in secondary and tertiary markets ” has seen nothing in the recent economic crisis to make him change his mind.

Herp is so sanguine about the VLJ/air taxi future that he recently announced formation of Eclipse Services and Support LLC, a co-op venture which hopes to buy certain key Eclipse assets including parts and manuals needed for maintenance and upgrades on current 500s.

More interesting, is the Herp group’s plan to walk away from the Eclipse bankruptcy sale with so-called intellectual property which could include blueprints, engineering documents, computer applications, patent rights and other items that could someday facilitate production of a new Eclipse.

Atlanta-based ImagineAir Co-founder and President Benjamin Hamilton is still another industry insider who sees no reason to revise his company’s mission statement to meet new economic realities.

Interviewed by ATF several months prior to last fall’s stock market crash, Hamilton said “our goal is to use everything the major airlines do wrong as the basis for what we do right. Among other things, that means we are tightly focused on ease of use and customer service. It means we want to offer a fast, easy, personalized and pleasurable flight experience for our customers by removing the hassle and time-intensive processes that plague the airline industry.”

Avoiding the airline industry “plague” like, pardon the pun, the plague has done wonders for ImagineAir’s bottomline … it closed 2008 with a 90 percent increase in sales and a 117 percent rise in flights.

Meanwhile over at Cirrus Design, where the economy has driven production of current piston-engined models down to about 20 percent of pre-crash levels, CEO Brent Wouters remains bullish about the Cirrus Vision single-engine VLJ and affirmed that the Vision is still on target to be certified in late 2011.

According to Wouters’ boss, Cirrus Chairman Alan Klapmeie, the Vision, formerly known as the CirrusJet, will be “easy to learn, intuitive to operate, fun to fly, forgiving and safe as state-of-the-art technology can make them.”

To which Wouter adds this: The Vision is “our future engine of growth.”

And Honda, despite cutting North American automobile production by almost 50 percent in January, celebrated the February opening of its $100 million dollar HondaJet R&D campus in Piedmont, North Carolina by announcing plans to expand the 190,000 square foot facility to 500,000 square feet, starting with construction of a 250,000 manufacturing plant this summer.

Even better, Honda Aircraft CEO & President Michimasa Fujino used the occasion to report that a.) an influx of new orders has forced the company to hike its initial annual production estimate by roughly 30 percent (to about 100 aircraft) and b.) Honda still expects to attain certification and begin deliveries in 2010.

So here’s the good news:

– Quality air-taxi operators who didn’t over-promise and un-deliver on service, who didn’t binge-order aircraft without any idea how they would eventually pay for them, who did devise and follow a market-savvy, sustainable business model are doing well.

– VLJ makers at both end of the price-sticker spectrum — Cirrus with its roughly $1 million Vision and Honda, which has taken over 100 HondaJet orders at just under $4 million per — are optimistic about the future.

And here’s the bad news:

– VLJ air-taxi service will probably not be coming to a community airport near you as soon as you had hoped.

– You will have to continue using scheduled airlines instead of air taxis for awhile and those flights are going to get continually more unpleasant and expensive as airlines deploy ever more tools for draining blood from their stonily suffering passengers. (In fairness to the airlines, rumors that the industry is planning to put parking meters on the washrooms and offer peeping-inclined passengers a $25 fee to watch closed-circuit telecasts from those being used by couples struggling to ravage the smoke detector — or each other — seem to be unfounded.)

Weighing the good news against the bad and comparing the results to the prospects facing other segments of the aviation industry, not to mention the auto, retail, hospitality and consumer electronics industries, one conclusion is inescapable … the air taxi/VLJ business isn’t really doing so bad after all.

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