Turbine Pilot

Take a booming economy, add a new breed of small fanjet engines, toss in some entrepreneurs, and factor in an aging fleet of light business jets and turboprop twins. That's a recipe for opportunity for manufacturers willing to risk bringing new designs to market. Here, we'll review six of these new designs (well, to be technically accurate, two of them aren't so new) and the status of their development. As with any new aircraft design, these airplanes still face many challenges before rollout. For one thing, no conforming prototypes (i.e., airplanes that match the intended specifications of production airplanes) have yet to fly. For that matter, some of these proposed new designs remain "paper airplanes" — concepts that live only on drafting boards or in computer memory. Even so, the promise of these new efforts is a powerful one. Powerful enough to invade an already weakened turboprop twin market and, when linked with fractional ownership schemes, attract the interest of many owners of high-end piston singles and twins.

Sino Swearingen SJ30-2

The SJ30-2 is an outgrowth of a previous Swearingen design known as the SJ30 or SJ30-1, and dates back to an infancy in 1988. The original design, built by famed designer Ed Swearingen, faltered under financial hardship until Taiwan's Sino Aerospace Investment Corporation came to the rescue with some $200 million. Hence the prefix to the current company's name.

The -2 will have Williams-Rolls FJ44-2A engines of 2,300 pounds static thrust, which represent a power upgrade over the 1,900-lbst FJ44-1 engines used in the earlier design. The SJ30-2 is positioned as a 0.83 Mach, 2,500-nm hot rod of a business jet. Its projected price of $3.72 million makes it more expensive to buy than the entrenched light-jet sales leader — the $3.3 million Cessna CitationJet — but the SJ30-2 is meant to go farther, faster, and higher. That explains why the latter three words are featured in the SJ30-2's marketing sloganry.

"We have a performance airplane," says Sino Swearingen President Jack Braly. "You have your Cadillacs and your Corvettes, and the Corvette buyer doesn't typically lose a lot of sleep making a buying decision between the two. We're the Corvette." Braly, a past president of the Beech Aircraft Corporation, thinks that the SJ30-2 will attract a lot of owner-pilots who've become tired of plodding along in their twin turboprops. "It'll also make a great entry-level jet for smaller corporations that need to fly coast-to-coast. Ordinarily, they would have to spend $10 [million] to $12 million to have an airplane with a 2,500-mile range. But what if you have a $7 million budget and still need to go coast-to-coast?" Braly said.

Addressing the issue of cabin comfort, Braly emphasizes that the airplane is "as comfortable as we can make it, and we think it's adequate," and says that comfort is more than just roominess. The SJ30-2's 12-psi cabin pressure differential means that sea-level pressure can be maintained up to 41,000 feet. "A lot of travel fatigue is caused by high cabin altitudes, and we won't have that," Braly said.

Right now, low-speed certification tests are being performed on the airplane photographed for this article. Dubbed serial number 001A, this airplane is a derivative of the original SJ30. In fact, it was cut into five pieces and reassembled as a preproduction prototype of the -2. To accommodate the heavier engines and to meet the range targets, the prototype was given beefed-up nacelle structures and attach points, a six-foot-wider wingspan and additional fuel capacity, plus a 58-inch fuselage stretch. To better handle crosswinds, the -2's wings were given a two-degree dihedral; the -1's wings had anhedral.

These changes caused the SJ30-2 to exceed its originally specified maximum takeoff weight of 12,500 pounds (the estimated maximum takeoff weight is now anticipated as being 13,200 pounds). Busting that magic 12,500-pound figure carries with it some major-league consequences. For one thing, certification under the less-stringent provisions of FAR Part 23 is usually out. So is single-pilot certification. Those two goals were uppermost in Sino Swearingen's objectives for the SJ30-2, so the company came up with a Plan B to avoid the expense and hassle of certification under FAR Part 25.

Plan B is to seek certification under a little-known provision of Part 23 called the Commuter category — which is an unfortunate misnomer — previously used for turboprop twins that broke the 12,500-pound mark. These include the Beech King Air 350 and Beech Starship. The problem with the Part 23 Commuter category is that it's worded to apply to propeller-driven airplanes and has therefore never been applied to jets. Sino Swearingen is seeking an exemption for the SJ30-2, citing the safety advantages of turbofan engines over turboprops. Braly says that he wants to hold on to single-pilot certification and thinks that achieving this will be less of a problem.

So far, the FAA and its European counterpart, the Joint Airworthiness Administration (JAA), have posed no obstacles to the SJ30-2's earning Commuter category certification, and Braly remains upbeat. But if things fall through and the airplane has to be at 12,500 pounds for certification, the company will still build the SJ30-2. "It just won't have as big a payload," Braly said.

Sino Swearingen is now in the midst of design definition, and its 124 engineers are busy generating drawings of structures at their computer-assisted-design (CAD) computer stations. Computational fluid dynamics software is being used to examine the airplane's behavior at high airspeeds under various loadings. The first three conforming airplanes will be built at Sino Swearingen's facility at the San Antonio International Airport and will be used for performance and handling, systems trials, and function and reliability tests, respectively. Two additional airplanes will be set aside as static and fatigue test articles. There are 224 employees now working in San Antonio.

The fifth and subsequent SJ30-2s are to be built in Sino Swearingen's recently completed assembly plant at the Eastern West Virginia Regional Airport in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and deliveries to customers are set to begin in late 1999 or early 2000.

Raytheon Premier I

The Premier I is a landmark design in that it's the first all-new airplane built under the Raytheon name. Designed to carry five occupants as far as 1,500 nautical miles with NBAA IFR reserves, the Premier I uses Williams-Rolls FJ44-2As — the same engines as the SJ30-2 — but it has less range and a slightly lower high cruise true airspeed. Its cabin, however, is significantly roomier.

The Premier is also distinctive in that its construction will be a hybrid, with wings and empennage made of aluminum and a composite fuselage. Raytheon has invested heavily in the technology and tooling necessary to make the composite elements, and the result is an airplane with a comparatively low parts count and the promise of simplified operations and maintenance.

Right now, the first test airplane is being assembled, and it should be completed by early spring. It will be used for flight tests. Four additional test airplanes will be built after that for additional certification tests, including one for damage tolerance. The airplane will be certified under FAR Part 23, up to amendment 52. Like the SJ30-2, the Premier I will carry single-pilot certification and will be certified under JAA regulations as well.

Since the project was first announced, there have been some changes to the design that have caused a slippage in the production schedule. Among them was a redesign of the spoilers to augment aileron power in the roll axis. Also, fuel capacity was bumped from 3,365 to 3,648 pounds in order to make the 1,500-nm range target. Despite the increased fuel weight, Raytheon says that the airplane will still carry the pilot and four passengers 1,500 nm, although it's important to note that the airplane's precise weights have yet to be determined. When you're building any new airplane, extra weight is always apt to be packed onto the original design statement. In the case of a Part 23 airplane, however, it's especially critical not to break the 12,500-pound takeoff weight mark, as Sino Swearingen has discovered.

One interesting aspect of the Premier I is its use of an electromechanical, impulse-type ice protection system for the airplane's empennage leading edges. In this design, ice is blasted from the leading edges by small actuators that use almost one-third the electrical power that would have been consumed by electrothermal devices. Wing leading edges are protected by conventional, bleed-air heated panels.

To begin with, Raytheon plans for 10 domestic service centers aimed at taking care of Premier Is by 1999. After that, more service centers in the United States and overseas are due to be set up. The airframe and avionics (which include a three-tube Collins Pro Line 21 package) will have five-year warranties. A three-year/1,500-hour warranty covers the engines.

Raytheon Hawker Horizon

The Hawker Horizon, a super-midsize business jet capable of carrying six passengers at 0.82 Mach as far as 3,100 nm, has been conceived as both a replacement for Raytheon's Hawker 1000 and a logical next step in the Hawker design progression. At a long-range cruise power setting, the Horizon should be able to fly 3,400 nm. With a nearly 62-foot wing span and 36,000-pound takeoff weight, the Horizon will be the biggest jet Raytheon has ever built. Like the Premier I, the Horizon will have a graphite/honeycomb composite fuselage and aluminum wings.

The Horizon — and its competitors, the Cessna Citation X and the yet-to-be-certifed Galaxy Aerospace Galaxy (see "Upper Middle Class," p. T-4) — is aimed at the market niche just below the segment occupied by Challengers and Gulfstreams. Raytheon is banking on the homey and spacious feel of the Hawker cabin — a feel it's gone to great detail to preserve — to give the Horizon an edge over the competition. New, 6,500-lbst Pratt & Whitney PW308A fanjet engines should also make the airplane attractive. They come with five-year, 3,000-hour warranties; the airframe will have a 10-year, 10,000-hour warranty.

For pilots, the most captivating part of the Horizon is apt to be its avionics suite. This will be Honeywell's new Epic system, a five-tube modular system with its own operating system and point-and-click cursor controls. The idea here is to eventually do away with a conventional flight management system and replace it with on-screen cursor controls and softkeys that let the pilot call up anything from flight plans to system schematics to weather radar displays — all on the huge, 8 X 10 inch, active-matrix liquid crystal displays. It's a revolutionary new system that should set a mark for other manufacturers to watch closely. The Horizon is the Epic's launch customer.

The Horizon is on a slightly later production schedule than the Premier I. Deliveries are supposed to begin in spring 2001. So far, Raytheon claims that everything is on track and on target, although the company did announce a 4.5-inch rearward shift in the wing position to accommodate the effects of an unanticipated weight savings in the nose. Part of that weight savings resulted from the Epic components, which came in some 100 pounds lighter than expected. Other changes announced so far include an increase in the vertical tail area from 85 to 110 square feet (for better directional stability when flying high and fast), a switch from a six- to a four-panel windshield (eliminating two posts improves cockpit visibility), and going from eight to seven cabin windows per side.

Tests of scale-model Horizons have been accomplished in high-, low-, and transonic-speed wind tunnels at Boeing, NASA Langley, Aircraft Research Associates, and University of Washington facilities. And, yes, Raytheon claims that all tests to date confirm all performance, load, and handling qualities of the final aircraft configuration. That's nice, but the real verification of results won't happen until first flight of the real McCoy in late 1999.

VisionAire Vantage

Up to now, we've been talking about twin-engine fanjets. But the VisionAire VA-10 Vantage — a 350-knot, 900-nm, four-passenger (six, if you include the pilot stations), single-engine jet — is hoping to find a brand-new slice of the market.

To overcome doubts about the safety of flying with a single jet engine, VisionAire chose the venerable Pratt & Whitney JT15D-5 of 2,500 lbst — a variant of the thousands of engines that have given good service on Cessna Citations I and II. Safety consultant Robert E. Breiling was commissioned to do a safety study that proved what everyone already knew: that fanjets were more reliable than turboprops or piston engines. VisionAire likes to say that the in-flight shutdown rate of the JT15D is such that if you flew 500 hours a year, you might have a problem after flying for 250 years. If that still bothers you, consider that if a Vantage engine quits at 35,000 feet, its anticipated 17:1 glide ratio should give you a 100-nm range in which to find a nice place to land.

The Vantage is an all-composite design, and the proof-of-concept airplane was built by futuristic-design guru Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites, based in southern California's Mojave Desert. Although Rutan had a major say in the design, he won't be building production Vantages, at least not in their entirety. VisionAire feels that the wet-layup process used to build the proof-of-concept VisionAire is unsuitable for production airplanes. Instead, VisionAire will use composites preimpregnated with epoxy and cured in autoclaves, using techniques that it believes yield more consistent, certifiable results.

The first few Vantages used for test purposes will be built at the company's facilities on the Spirit of St. Louis Airport in Chesterfield, Missouri. Eventually, all Vantages will be assembled at its new manufacturing plant, now under construction at the Ames (Iowa) Municipal Airport.

The Vantage's design is unusual not just for its futuristic looks, single engine, and all-composite construction. The wings have forward sweep, a feature that VisionAire says was chosen in order to allow larger cabin dimensions. With this arrangement, the spar box is installed at the rear of the cabin, aft of the lavatory. To keep the center of lift in its proper position, the wings had to be swept forward. VisionAire says that the forward sweep and the mid-wing attach points make for less drag, better stall characteristics, better wing torsional stiffness, and a wider center-of-gravity envelope than a conventional straight-wing arrangement.

The Vantage may have the widest speed envelope of all the new jets discussed here. The goal is for a 70-knot stall speed in the landing configuration, and a high-speed cruise figure of at least 350 knots. Based on the proof-of-concept's 82 flights and 152 flight hours' worth of experience, VisionAire believes that a stall speed as low as 64 knots may be achievable, depending on weight. As for the top end, officials say that the airplane has gone as fast as 390 knots on several occasions. If it has any shortcomings, it may well be its range. In its performance guarantee, VisionAire is claiming a 900-nm range with IFR reserves. Note that this is the minimum for IFR flying, and NBAA IFR reserves are not mentioned. (NBAA IFR reserves allow for flight to the intended destination, followed by a missed approach, a diversion to an alternate with a hold for five minutes, and a landing at the alternate airport — with 45 minutes of fuel in reserve). The Vantage is to be certified for single-pilot operation under FAR Part 23.

The Vantage timetable has it being certified in the fourth quarter of 1999. As of this writing, however, the design had yet to be frozen. This summer, an eight-inch fuselage stretch was being seriously considered, and there's talk of adding a two-position speed brake made up of the forward portion of the main landing gear doors.

As new business jet purchases go, the Vantage is easy to get into. An initial deposit of $10,000 is due upon signing, followed by $50,000 six months later. A year before delivery, you have to pony up $125,000; and six months before you get the keys, you fork over $175,000. The money is kept in an interest-bearing escrow account; but if you walk out on the deal, you lose the first two payments. The rest of the airplane's $1.75 million price tag is due at delivery.

VisionAire says that business is brisk, with "over 100" nonrefundable deposits. At this year's AOPA Expo, 11 buyers bellied up to the bar, and one wrote a check in the first hour the static display was open.

After VisionAire does the heavy lifting of certifying the first single-engine business fanjet, the going may be easier for others who follow. That's OK, VisionAire says, because even with the 2,000 total airplanes it plans to sell, there'll be room for still more competition. "But the others will be two to three years behind us," says Jorge Pérez, VisionAire's vice president of strategic planning and marketing.

Century Aerospace Century Jets

The Century Jet, also a single-engine aircraft, is another single-engine design that plans to make use of the Williams-Rolls FJ44 engine. In fact, Century Aerospace has come up with two Century Jet concepts — one, the CJ-1, using the 1,900-lbst FJ44-1 engine; and the other, the CJ-2, using the 2,300-lbst FJ44-2. The CJ-1 will be certified first, and their owners can upgrade to the -2 models at a later time.

These airplanes are still in the preliminary design phase, making the fourth-quarter 1999 certification goal a tough one to make. Like the Vantage, the Century Jets will be certified to Part 23 single-pilot standards and have comfy, albeit snug, four-plus-two-place cabins. Unlike the Vantage, construction will be aluminum — and there won't be a lavatory.

The Century Jet's strong suit is its range and projected low hourly cost of operation. The CJ-1's IFR range is set at 1,600 nm; the CJ-2 should be able to go 1,500 nm. Note that these ranges, like those given for the Vantage, are standard IFR ranges — not the industry-standard, more conservative NBAA IFR ranges. Because the Century's Williams engine should burn less fuel than the Vantage's Pratt, direct operating costs are forecast to be $265 (CJ-1) and $300 (CJ-2) per hour. (The Vantage's direct hourly operating costs should be in the $300 range.) These figures are far lower than the hourly cost of flying a typical turboprop twin (which is about $500 per hour), let alone a twin-engine fanjet.

Century's secret weapon is its president, Bill Northrup — a self-made millionaire who started out selling discarded railroad ties and wound up running his own electrical power station. Northrup's infectious, unjaded enthusiasm draws prospects and appears to get things done within the Century organization. Word has it that 10 orders have been placed for the $1.85 million CJ-1. If you want one, you'd better act fast because after the first 20 are sold, the price jumps to $1.95 million.

"Bill's got the right plan," says Boston-area physician Michael Alper, who holds delivery position number seven. "I was sold by him and his airplane. The Vantage burns double the fuel, and it's heavier, too."

Alberta Aerospace Phoenix Fanjet

The Phoenix Fanjet isn't really a new design. It's Belgium's old Promavia Jet Squalus trainer, resurrected from the mid-1980s by a Canadian corporation.

The Phoenix will come in two models, we're told — a two-place and a four-place. Both will use the Williams-Rolls FJ44-1 engine, and both will be certified under Part 23 single-pilot rules. These jets can fly as fast as 345 knots and have IFR ranges of up to 945 nm. The two-place version is being touted as a low-cost primary trainer capable of educating ab initio students in jet operations from day one. The four-place version will be pressurized. Both airplanes will have canopies.

Since so much flight testing has already been accomplished under the Jet Squalus program, Alberta Aerospace anticipates that the Phoenix Fanjets will be certified by May. The two-place jet will sell for $1.575 million; the four-place airplane will go for $1.875 million.

Six new airplanes, six new production lines and schedules — that's a definite sign of industry optimism and another apparent confirmation of a turnaround in sales of new general aviation airplanes. A revolutionary new chapter in turbine flying is about to unfold, thanks to the single-engine fanjets, with repercussions potentially more significant than those created by the introduction of turboprop singles 12 years ago. Look for updates on these airplanes in future issues of AOPA Pilot as they make their way to ramps near you.

Next Generation Jets

Specifications subject to change.

For more information, contact Sino Swearingen Aircraft Company, 1770 Sky Place Boulevard, San Antonio, Texas 78216 (888/538-7530); Raytheon Aircraft Company, 10511 East Central, Wichita, Kansas 67206 (800/866-1000); VisionAire Corporation, 595 Bell Avenue, Chesterfield, Missouri 63005 (800/288-1655); Century Aerospace Corporation, 350 University Boulevard S.E., Access Road B, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106 (505/246-8200); or Alberta Aerospace Corporation, 575 Palmer Road N.E., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2E 7G4 (403/250-3321). E-mail the author at [email protected].