As an New Mexican who's toured Eclipse's facilities and seen the mockup, I'm really glad everything went well on the first flight. This will mean good things for our economy and lots of opportunities.
Extra big Vern Rayburn BUMP!
I've seen the Eclipse 500 business jet displays at the air shows in Oshkosh, WI and Lakeland, FL. It is a sweet looking, fast 6 seat business jet with great avionics. At just under one million $, it will sell as fast as they can build it.
This is really, really sweet. These guys deserve MAJOR kudos for coming up with this. The Eclipse is one nice jet. Here's hoping they can get up to speed and start producing them as fast as the market can buy them.
Let's do a quick comparasion of the numbers, shall we? Most flights are around 1000 miles, on average. This plane holds what, seven or eight passengers? And it costs $900k. A commercial jet holds something like 150 passengers and costs what, $25 million a pop? Do the math. The Eclipse costs half as much to move the same number of people around. Of course, you have the cost of extra pilots, but you also have the convenience of being able to use small airports.
All in all I think these guys are onto something. I wish them great success in their business.