No eclipse at eclipse

New Mexico Business Journal, Nov, 2001

Despite the fact that Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque has yet to produce a single plane (the first flight is scheduled for July 2002), it has snagged an order of 1,000 of them from an outfit called the Nimbus Group, which plans to use the aircraft to operate air taxi services in North and South America. Nimbus has no experience doing any such thing but will presumably gain a sufficient amount before it takes possession of the birds beginning in 2004. Nimbus has also taken an equity position in Eclipse, the size of which has not been disclosed.

The Eclipse 500 is a six-place (a pilot and five passengers) executive jet that expects to sell for about a third of the price of current jets, thanks to some revolutionary thinking about engines and electronics. Eclipse recently announced that the first metal has been cut for the aircraft. This is actually a big deal, says CEO Vern Raburn, because "after more than three years of hard work and dedication, we have entered the production phase of the development program." The company also announced that William Bubb is its new chief test pilot. Bubb has more than 20 years' (some 8,000 hours) of test experience with companies that include Piper, Pilatus and Raytheon.