Thanks John,

I've heard similar stories from a few other's that have flown the Eclipse.

John,

If everyone felt the way you do, they wouldn't be bankrupt.

Just sayin'.

Also, in terms of size, I'm not talking about just the pilot seat.

No. They were driven to bankruptcy by mismanagement of the company, and bad decisions to keep everything in-house.

The last two seats were pretty small, but larger than they were in my V-35B. I took the fifth seat out of the V-35B, and the sixth seat out of the Eclipse.

As with any airplane, there were compromises. I know a bunch of people who consider it a fine airplane, perfect for THEIR mission.

Best...
John Deakin

No. They were driven to bankruptcy by mismanagement of the company, and bad decisions to keep everything in-house.

The last two seats were pretty small, but larger than they were in my V-35B. I took the fifth seat out of the V-35B, and the sixth seat out of the Eclipse.

As with any airplane, there were compromises. I know a bunch of people who consider it a fine airplane, perfect for THEIR mission.

Best...
John Deakin

When I visited them in Albuquerque recently I was very impressed. To me the only thing wrong with the aircraft is the instrument panel with its integration. For the money I think its really good. It would fit my mission perfectly as I am usually the only one that usually is flying but to the fact that I do not run a plane under a company banner and could not justify it as an individual.....to my wife. But if she ever got hit by the beer truck that jet would be sitting in my hanger the next day. But to me the best advantage would be able to get above most any weather as Dino point out.

Keep in mind that you don't get "unrestricted" climb in the Eclipse to 38,000 feet. Definitely not in Atlanta and for sure not anywhere in Florida.

The Eclipse is not like a turboprop where you fly in the high teens and 20's. For me, flying in and out of PDK and having to file IFR for every flight and having to get "stepped up" on every flight, I don't see how this plane would work for me.

Here's the bottom line..... If it was a viable product, it would sell. It doesn't matter about "mismanagement". If the management sucked, someone would've come along by now and bought the whole thing and revived it. But they haven't. It's just a bad product.

Same thing.

An SR22 owner on the red board recently posted about buying one for $900K. One thing he mentioned I didn't know - Eclipse currently has a 10 year airframe limit. He's hoping that will be extended, but wow, if not - he's already two years into it's useful life.

I tried to look it up - according to wiki it's 10,000 hours, 10,000 cycles, or 10 years, whichever comes FIRST

10 years? That sucks.

Y2K seems like yesterday to me.

As I understand it, that 10,000 or 10 years is a fairly common standard limitation on new types. The idea being that as the fleet average grows, the limits will be raised.

John Deakin

Here is a link to a Business AVFlash article dated September, 2005. In a nutshell, the Eclipse has a design life of 20,000 hours. The FAA issued a type certificate with 10,000 hour initial time limit, which apparently is an unusually high number.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/b ... tml#190661

I found the Porsche Cayman S to be cramped inside as well and it really lacks second row seating. I still would give quite a bit of money to have one in my garage.

An Eclipse with flush riveted and glued fuselage, G1000 avionics and the correct engine from the start for 1.5mil would have sold at rates similar to other light bizjets. It is the investment scam and poor decisions around the project that sunk it, not the number of seats or their size.

I don't know that I would call it a bad product per se. What is apparent is that the number of people/organizations for whom the Eclipse is a perfect fit for their mission is much smaller than they thought - particularly now.