Haven't you heard about friction stir welding?

Will jets be mass produced like cars... no!

Can even basic volume production methods implemented by manufacturers all over the world increase production and lower cost... YES!

I worked for a utility trailer manufacturer, our plant was higher tech 25 years ago than Cessna's is today.

Why not? Have you visited a "modern" GA airplane production plant?
Then have you gone to Boeing, Airbus... or any of the other Airline plants?


Tim

Why not?

But not enough to matter for light jets.


It wouldn't be if it made 100 trailers a year.

Cessna is not stupid, they know how to make planes as cheaply as they can for their volumes.

It seems the dream of a cheap mass produced jet is so strong, people are willing to ignore reality to hang on to it.

Mike C.

Pilatus builds 70-80 PC12s a year

TBM builds 50 TBMs a year

Embraer has delivered 800+ 100's and 300's since they were developed

According to you, they're all losing money.

I have a lawyer friend who told me how he handled a defense case. He was defending a man accused of owning a dog that bit a neighbor.

First, he argued that no injury occurred.
Then he argued that if there was one, the injury was not due to a dog bite.
Then he insisted that if it was a dog bite, the defendant didn't own a dog.
Then he argued that if he did own a dog, it wasn't the defendant's dog that did the biting.

He lost each argument, and his client was guilty, but he did run up several hours of defense billing time.....so he considered it a successful case.

In my mind the VLJ market is tough. Mike does a good job of demonstrating how you really can't mass produce any of the damn things. And yeah, Vern marketed his friction welding whatever, but the fact is there is a quantum leap in costs of certifying, producing and owning a twin turbine jet over say even a TP. Now you may say a TBM or a KA cost more, but generally they can outperform the VLJ in the two critical areas, payload and range. Not to mention that don't generally require an annual type rating.

Eclipse, riding the boom of the early 2000's, scared the others into trying the VLJ market: the Mustang, the Phenom 100, now the Honda, and Cirrus. The thought is all the millionaires are going to run off and fly a jet...Well most I know take a Net Jets or similar, say a Phenom 300. Now there are some charter companies using light jets that seem to be doing well inEurope, but it's a lot smaller area to cover. But flying your own? Hell, that's work!

Now once you get out of the VLJ and LJ side things are different. Now you have payload, range, and speed. The CJ's and say the Phenom 300. Now those are a whole different league.

Perhaps all the Cirrus piston people will pick it up. Well see. Myself? if the business need arises, and I'm trying to make it happen, I will entry level a VLJ and then move up.

As long as your lawyer friend was being paid by the defendants liability insurance company then I think everyone won.

Pretty standard business model; let someone else develop a new concept, then, jump in if it's seems to be working out. The other guys watched someone not even in the business prove demand; then, got in quickly.

I don't want to reiterate all the things eclipsed did, but...
One has to probably be a multimillion air to qualify to purchase a $2MM plane. How many of those?
Then, of that universe, one will have to not only be a pilot, but get a jet type rating.
Then, cost of training to include meaningful mentor time.
That's a very small market to begin to fly a plane personally.

Now, if it became a commercial aircraft with flights going to places airlines didn't serve or charter, that opens the door a bit more but if successful, others will pounce.

I'd love to have an affordable VLJ, but for the limited flights I do, just not worth putting that much money in a depreciating asset. I lose enough money trying to invest in things with appreciation potential.

How do you know? I have seen the videos previously. In fact there is/was one floating around showing most of a Cirrus SR2X and Cessna 172 being built. The difference between them was rather substantial.
In all cases, as you pointed out final assembly is a manual job, automating this is not worth the costs.

In the Cirrus, they used much larger molded parts which were fairly automated from filling to curing and even rough trimming. Why Cessna still had many smaller parts which were manually pushed through the metal presses.

Further, in the old engineering blog Cirrus used to have (it has since been taken down, was really fascinating to read) they sort of alternated between three areas.

• First focus was always to investigate repeat warranty claims and other services at Cirrus centers which caused customer unhappiness. The goal being find the cause and prevent the issue in the future.
• Second focus was manufacturing, there was always a constant effort to reduce human error and labor in the process; often by combining parts into one larger mold.
• The last was product improvements, driven by marketing. It was very interesting to see how they would do all sorts of little improvements which are all "kept" hidden before the new generation is released. Best example is the 200lb gross weight increase; the landing gear changes were introduced a few years before.

So even at the paltry rate of 200+ a year, Cirrus was constantly looking to reduce production costs.
If you look at the machinist union negotiations with Boeing over the years you will see that automation has been very selectively been introduced and the number of hours of labor is continuing to decline.

Cessna on the other hand seems to have applied this to the TTx and the jets; but not to the rest of the piston line; based on part commonalities over the years. Maybe the volume is just not there....

So getting back to the point, how do you know what Williams has chosen to automate? I know you are/were in robotics, so you likely have a good perspective on the more complex robotics costs.
However, the most critical components in the turbofan are items like the blisk, single composite disk for the power section. With the super tight tolerances required in engine core, how many do you need to make before a human makes a mistake? What is the magical break even point to automate production of such core parts to reduce variation and allow better performance and tighter tolerances?
Notice also that the FJ33-5A, uses the same hot section as the FJ44... The places which require the tightest tolerances are shared across a rather large product set and volume.

So it all comes back to, let's see the financials.... See what the cost is to replace an engine in a Cirrus. How much is the OEM discount?

Tim

They are using robots on the Cirrus Jet production line.

He wasn't given a chance to do it. The rug was pulled from under him just as he was starting to scale up the production, before efficiencies of scale could be achieved.

That calculation changes once you stop thinking about a small just as an owner-flown airplane and start thinking about it as an efficient and cost-effective transportation system for the masses.

Not the Embraer small stuff.

Good to hear!