Ed Iacobucci's story is an interesting one but you oversimplify it if you believe he had no aviation background when he set out to build DayJet. He'd actually already been in the charter business and merely wanted to apply his computer knowledge to the task of matching aircraft profitably to charter demand (a task that today still isn't done very well by conventional charter operators). Iacobucci entered the charter business in 1999 with a 3-jet operation.

Personally, I think his was a clever idea that got torpedoed by the delay in delivery of a functional aircraft and the global the financial collapse.

Ken

There's a lot of merit in that statement.

This thread popped up today on my Google search, so I thought maybe I'd chime in with my two-cents worth. I'm the owner of Eclipse SN 151, which I purchased from the old company (at a great price, let me tell you!), upgraded with the new company, and have flown over 200,000 nm in 4+ years.

Hang in there--you can't beat the Eclipse. It's more cost-effective to acquire and more cost-effective to operate than any other jet. A Mustang is a nice plane, but it burns about 35% more fuel per mile and costs more upfront, yet it's actually a fair amount slower than the Eclipse. As a 4-seater, the Eclipse actually offers each occupant more personal space than they get in the larger Mustang--that seems counterintuitive, but it's true.

Eclipse owners do indeed like to fly the plane high and fast--here's 362 knots true airspeed at FL400 recently:



...while enjoying fuel economy of over 7 statute MPG. You can't beat this plane for what it's designed to do: fun, fast, safe, cost-effective jet transportation for 4 or 5 occupants. It takes you over the weather instead of through it, with a vibration-free cabin quiet enough that nobody in the back ever needs a headset. It is very much the defining aircraft of the "personal jet" genre.

Ken

There's a lot of merit in that statement.

This thread popped up today on my Google search, so I thought maybe I'd chime in with my two-cents worth. I'm the owner of Eclipse SN 151, which I purchased from the old company (at a great price, let me tell you!), upgraded with the new company, and have flown over 200,000 nm in 4+ years.

Hang in there--you can't beat the Eclipse. It's more cost-effective to acquire and more cost-effective to operate than any other jet. A Mustang is a nice plane, but it burns about 35% more fuel per mile and costs more upfront, yet it's actually a fair amount slower than the Eclipse. As a 4-seater, the Eclipse actually offers each occupant more personal space than they get in the larger Mustang--that seems counterintuitive, but it's true.

Eclipse owners do indeed like to fly the plane high and fast--here's 362 knots true airspeed at FL400 recently:


...while enjoying fuel economy of over 7 statute MPG. You can't beat this plane for what it's designed to do: fun, fast, safe, cost-effective jet transportation for 4 or 5 occupants. It takes you over the weather instead of through it, with a vibration-free cabin quiet enough that nobody in the back ever needs a headset. It is very much the defining aircraft of the "personal jet" genre.

Ken

Even Bill gates pulled out of the Eclipse game. That being said, nothing can really do what an Eclipse does. Some come close. Better MPG than a baron?

Passed my ATP written with a 90 today.

Eclipse school starts Thursday!

I was an early investor in Visionaire... Remember the Vantage? Anyway, I got to know some engineers from there and I was standing with one of them when the original Eclipse announcement was made at OSH. He looked at the numbers and told me as soon as he saw the numbers, they don't have enough thrust to move the airplane at the promised speeds. Flight test proved it, then the engines got bigger, the fuel capacity had to be increased, the gross weight went up, and the price went with it. When the price went up, and the speed and payload went down, the demand which was always over stated, dropped even further...

The point is, they over promised, vastly under-delivered, and collected a lot of investor money in the process.....

With all that said, it is still a very nice, very fast, very efficient little airplane.... But it is not cheap, and it will never come close to competing with a Baron for $/passenger seat mile.

Doug, he may have been prescient--the company did overpromise and underdeliver, but I think he was wrong when he said the thrust was obviously too low for the promised performance.

Eclipse originally envisioned a MGTOW for their aircraft at 4770 lbs. The Williams EJ22 engines, had they reliably developed 770 lbs of thrust as they were supposed to, would have yielded a weight to thrust ratio for the plane of under 3.1, which is actually a little less carried weight per pound of thrust than the ultimately delivered version of the plane has. And, as you probably know, the plane actually delivered routinely exceeds the cruise speed of 355 knots originally promised; we typically see 360+ knots in the mid thirties:



IMHO what went wrong with the original design is that the Williams engines failed to deliver as promised *and* the plane gained weight--as so many do--during development. That led to the switch to the Pratt & Whitney engines, with their higher weight and higher thrust.


Could be. Anybody know offhand what the per mile direct operating cost of a Baron is?

Ken

Ken,

Even if I knew what my DOC per mile was, there is no way I am going to admit it! I am sure many people here feel the same.

Tim

If you believe in the adage that a complex aircraft operates at roughly 3X fuel cost, then that would put LOP operation of the Baron in the $2.00-$2.75 per NM range for total cost. Direct cost would probably be 2/3 of that or $1.35-$1.85. Of course you can get your numbers to show whatever you want them to with very little tweaking.
For this little "outloud thinking" exercise, I figured 25 GPH LOP at 175 Kts. I am also assuming that the seating capacity of each is similar.

Doug, he may have been prescient--the company did overpromise and underdeliver, but I think he was wrong when he said the thrust was obviously too low for the promised performance.

Eclipse originally envisioned a MGTOW for their aircraft at 4770 lbs. The Williams EJ22 engines, had they reliably developed 770 lbs of thrust as they were supposed to, would have yielded a weight to thrust ratio for the plane of under 3.1, which is actually a little less carried weight per pound of thrust than the ultimately delivered version of the plane has. And, as you probably know, the plane actually delivered routinely exceeds the cruise speed of 355 knots originally promised; we typically see 360+ knots in the mid thirties:



IMHO what went wrong with the original design is that the Williams engines failed to deliver as promised *and* the plane gained weight--as so many do--during development. That led to the switch to the Pratt & Whitney engines, with their higher weight and higher thrust.


Could be. Anybody know offhand what the per mile direct operating cost of a Baron is?

Ken

We had an Eclipse that belongs to a charter operator parked on the ramp at KTHV for over a week. They wanted to leave after dropping their passenger, but whenthey went to start it seems as though they couldn't get both engines to run at the same time. Either one would start and run, but not one after the other. Apparently it was some kind of software problem. This may be an extreme case, but I wouldn't want an aircraft that unreliable.

this is a fantastic thread!!

Oh, I was unaware that this aircraft was operated on a Windows system.

The folks who designed it came from microsoft iirc.

(wtf is wrong with just hardwiring s### in a simple little aircraft)

Actually, I believe it is Unix.