January 2005
While 31,258 of my closest friends and I were in Las Vegas during mid-October at the National Business Aircraft Association (NBAA) Convention, we got a glimpse of the future. Each year, a sort of theme emerges from the convention. Last year it was entertainment centers; the year before it was the VLJ (very light jet) and RVSM solutions.
2004 will go down as the Year of The Supersonic Business Jet.
Now I’m just a poor country boy, not used to the fancy ways of the city, and about as conservative as society and the law allows. For instance, at the 1965 introduction of the Learjet 23, I pronounced that no one in their right mind would spend $600,000 for a bizjet, no matter how fast it was.
A couple of years later, I turned down investing in a company that had the insane plan to bottle water and sell it for $1 a quart, and another enterprise that proposed marketing computers for home use.
As a result of my well-earned reputation, several stockbrokers call me regularly to find out what companies I’ve invested in so that they can advise their clients to stay away from that stock.
But at the NBAA convention, I’ve learned to go against my natural instincts.
On the eve of the show, Reno-based Aerion pulled the sheets off its design for a Mach 1.6 (1,030 knot) 12-place twinjet that could conceivably be in service by 2011. The next day, Vegas-based Supersonic Aerospace International (SAI) announced its Mach 1.8 (1,158 knot) 12-passenger design that could be certified by 2012.
Apparently, even though most of us stopped thinking supersonic some years back, and the unprofitable Concordes have been retired, some folks have been finding solutions that may make the concept viable to an executive that wants to save three-and-a-quarter hours between New York and Paris.
The selling price (it’s so déclassé if you have to ask) is a cardiac-inspiring $80 million each.
What’s behind this sudden development is new aerodynamic technology that alters some of the laws with which we formerly had to live.
On the Aerion, that allows the patented natural laminar flow (NLF) wing platform to be combined with already certified airliner powerplants such as the old reliable Pratt &Whitney JT8D. Aerion says that technology will allow them to fly boomless cruise at Mach 1.1 and quieter than contemporary supersonics at higher speeds.
SAI’s plan is to use yet-to-be-certified engines on their Quiet Small Supersonic Transport (QSST), along with patented low-boom technology.
Add the SSBJ concept to the passel of single-engine turboprops that have come on the market in the last few years to those in development, and there’s a good chance that there’ll be a Pratt & Whitney (or Rolls or Williams) in your future.
Piper, Cessna, Pilatus and Socata have marketed an increasing number of turboprop singles over the last decade, and the Extra 500 has just been certified. Three additional models are in serious flight test programs: the 350-knot six-place Epic LT, the 270-knot, seven-place Grob-Werke 160 Ranger and the nine-place, 270-knot Ibis Ae270 Spirit.
Surprisingly, Piper and Cessna have explored the supersonic jet concept, although both are taking a wait and see stance—as well as letting the technology mature.
The turbine engine has been the carrot dangling in front of all of us for 50 years. It promises to be the answer to our power and operating cost problems, but its purchase price has always been its big detraction. But, with its incomparable economy, reliability, light weight and TBO times that are two and three times as long as its piston counterpart, it’s obvious that turbines will one day take over.
Just to be safe, I’m predicting it will be some time later this month.
Daryl Murphy has been writing about and flying a variety of aircraft for 36 years. In addition to this magazine, his work appears in General Aviation News and Aviation International News, and he has written five aviation books and one on automobile racing.
