Deliveries of new light jets continue to lag, but with some notable exceptions. Thehe $4.9 million HA-420 HondaJet is the most delivered jet in its category for the first half of 2017, with 24 deliveries in the period, according to data from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA). The company said it plans to deliver between 50 and 55 aircraft next year from its plant in Greensboro, North Carolina, where employment has ramped up to 1,800. The remaining order book stands at around 100 aircraft. As of early August, 54 HondaJets were in operation in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. Honda Aircraft reports that the HA-420 has gained a popular following with fractional ownership organizations and charter firms.
Isle of Man-based Fly HondaJet is a hybrid fractional ownership program that offers service in the UK and Europe. Fly HondaJet joins two other HondaJet operators in Europe. European Aero Training Institute Strasbourg (EATIS), a flight academy located in Strasbourg, France, will launch a public transport operation under an Air Operator Certificate with a HondaJet this summer. Privateways, a boutique jet charter company in Geestland, Germany, began a charter service in April. Additionally, HondaJets can be chartered through the company's U.S. dealer network via companies including HondaJet Northwest (Salt Lake City) and HondaJet Southwest (Phoenix). A spokesman for HondaJet said the average delivered aircraft is flying 80 hours per month.
Embraer continues its strong deliveries of the Phenom 300 as well, with 20 delivered in the first half of 2017 according to GAMA. "Our forecast is that the Phenom 300 will once again lead the overall market in unit shipments in 2017, in excess of 60 units,” JetNet iQ managing director Rollie Vincent told AIN. “Embraer tends to have a very strong fourth quarter; it delivered 25 Phenom 300s in fourth-quarter 2016.” While noting it is more difficult to forecast HondaJet deliveries at this early stage in the aircraft’s history, he said, “We believe Honda will end the year somewhere around 3.5 aircraft per month, or 42 shipments.” Embraer Executive Jets handed over the 400th Phenom 300 on March 31 of this year. The first Phenom 300 rolled off the production line in December 2009 All Phenoms are now being assembled at the company’s Melbourne, Florida assembly facility. The Phenom 300 has gained broad acceptance with fractional ownership programs and charter operators worldwide.
Textron Aviation's Cessna unit continues to deliver light jets, but announced earlier this year that it is pruning its product offerings from four to three, dropping the Citation Mustang. Excluding the Mustang, for the first six months of the year, Textron delivered 36 light jets scattered across three models: the M2, CJ3+, and CJ4.
One Aviation delivered four Eclipse 550s in the first six months of the year and is working on developing the follow-on Eclipse 700 derivative with more range and a larger cabin. The first test aircraft for the EA700 program made its first flight on September 1. The $3.6 million Eclipse 700 will feature a larger wing, 14-inch fuselage stretch, Garmin G3000 based touchscreen avionics, and Williams FJ33-5A engines. The company says it has approximately 50 orders for the 700, mainly from existing EA500 series owners.
On the lowest end of the spectrum, Cirrus Aircraft announced this summer that it is boosting the production rate of its $1.96 million, single-engine SF50 Vision Jet to one per week. Cirrus obtained FAA certification for the single-engine Vision Jet last October. Pat Waddick, Cirrus president of innovation and operations, said the slow delivery rate was deliberate and necessary to mature production processes. “We'd love to put a lot of airplanes out there, but the production has got to be stable. Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. Right now airplanes fly out very smoothly. Methodically going through the process ultimately gets us to the higher [production] rate at the quality level and efficiency that we want. We don't go by calendar targets. We're focused on showing stability at the rate we set out, and [if we] are ready to move on to the next step. Is the quality level where we want it and is the customer experience where we want it?” Waddick said Cirrus intends to bump jet production to two per week by early next year. Cirrus has orders for more than 600 Vision Jets.
The company already has planned for the additional production capacity. In this year's first quarter it opened a new 70,000-sq-ft paint and finishing center at its aircraft production facility in Duluth, Minnesota. Customer acceptance space that is now part of Cirrus's Knoxville, Tennessee “Vision Center” freed additional square footage in Duluth. Waddick said that the company plans to bring on a second shift on the jet line and more off-shift work to handle increased jet production rates. The four-building Vision Center campus opened six months ago. The training building remains under construction and will be finished by year-end. It features a level-D, full-motion simulator for the Vision Jet. In the next four to five months, all jet training will transition there. All training for the Cirrus's piston SR20 and SR22 models is already conducted there.
While there are individual bright spots within the new light jet market, JetNet iQ's Vincent thinks the nature of the light jet market's typical customer—mainly owner pilots and small business owners—mean that it is likely to recover slower than the business jet market as a whole. He also thinks there may be an overabundance of model choices currently available and that OEMs will be much more reluctant to invest in developing new models in the light jet space as opposed to super-medium or large cabin aircraft.
“The used light-jet market is stable, but there is a low level of activity. We're not seeing a lot of purchase interest. People are using their own money and it's not always a corporate airplane per se. People are very sensitive when they lose money in an asset to put money back into it. This is the slowest economic recovery since the 1930s with lots of differing economic signals. We haven't seen a pickup in new light jet interest,” Vincent said. He added that there is room in the light jet space for OEMs to “prune the garden” and shut down production lines of slow-selling models. “It's hard to make money when you have so many children to feed," he said
