On the Record with
VERN RABURN , PRESIDENT AND CEO OF ECLPSE AVIATION

Eclipse chief Vern Raburn exudes confidence.

Vern Raburn is the high profile and enthusiastic head of Eclipse Aviation, the soon-to-be makers of the Eclipse 500 Jet. With so many companies now chasing the notional market for small jet aircraft, he spoke to Show News about what sets Eclipse apart, how the program is going and why they are the ones to watch.

"The first thing to say is that the project is totally on schedule, on budget and meeting all its planned milestones," Raburn disclosed. "We have just come out of a four-day preliminary design review, which took in 37 hours of presentations and there's a file with seven-and-a-half inches of material in it, on my desk, to prove it. This was an internal PDR, but we included FAA representatives, along with our vendors."

"We examined all our performance, weight, cost and capability targets," he continued. "All those targets had to be met to exit the PDR, and they were. Nothing surfaced that was a showstopper, and while we have some issues to sort out, there is nothing that will cause us any serious trouble.
"Let me tell you, if you find you have a problem at this stage, then you really do have a problem. We don't-and we are along way ahead of anyone else in this process."

Raburn believes his company is a lot further along then the rest of the world perhaps realises. "For two years we have been doing nothing but solid work here. We have over 160 people working on this project and that's a lot more than any of our supposed competitors," he noted. "The PDR was a legitimate design review and we will have all the detailed design work completed in the next seven months. We will be equipping the factory in less than eight months from now. We're not doing any of this proof-of-concept or prototyping stuff either. The first aircraft we build will be built on hard tooling. Our first flight will be in June 2002, certification in late June 2003 and first delivery in August 2003."
Three major things set Eclipse apart from its rivals, Raburn told Show News.

Design review of the new Eclipse 500 has been completed with no showstoppers found.

"The first of these is capitalisation. Historically, there has been a gross underestimation of the budgets involved in this kind of work. Everyone is going around saying 'we can certify these new planes for $30 million'. Well, you can't. It's just not possible. Now everyone else is faced with going back to their early investors and explaining why they need so much more money and why their early investment was worth so little.

"The next consideration is execution. People wonder whether a project like this is 90% ideas and 10% execution, or 90% execution and 10% ideas. Well, I tell you that ideas are a dime-a-dozen and execution is what it's all about.

"The next thing is product innovation. You can't just introduce a new aircraft that is three-, or four- or five percent better than what's out there, and expect to sell any. You can't go up against the big brand names and their support structures. It has to be something that really is ground-breaking, and that's what we've got."

Raburn says that when Eclipse hits its 'value equation'-the mix of price point and performance-"there will be no comparable aircraft out there. I know from my experience in the computer business that when you introduce a product like this, what we call 'disruptive technology', you create a whole new market. Customers will treat an $800,000 jet in a very different way to an $8 million one. People are going to be doing things with these aircraft that we've never even thought of.

"We are investing on a very clear NRE basis, and if we have to, we will be able to build thousands of units per year. I can say that with a straight face. The demand is there and it's been done before. If you look at modern lean-production techniques and supply-chain management, the General Aviation business looks so antiquated.

"Walk into Cessna or Piper today and it all looks just like it did in the 1960s, but at the end of the 1970s Cessna was delivering eight or nine thousand aircraft a year. We can build a production process that is inexpensive and scales very easily. Mercedes takes 140 hours to build its most expensive automobile and GM takes 25 hours to build its cheapest. Everything-be it cars, computers or household appliances-is built differently today, and that's what we are going to be doing too."