On the Record With
Gary Leonard, President and General
Manager, GE Honda Aero Engines, LLC
The prevailing wisdom is that developers of a new generation
of light jets have chosen their engines. So why go ahead with the GE Honda
HF118, that's been rejected?
"I'd encourage you to think broadly," says Gary Leonard,
president and GM of GE Honda Aero Engines. The Adams and Diamonds and Eclipses
and Grobs, after all, are not standing still. "All these guys are thinking one
step ahead," Leonard says, stopping short of proclaiming his HF118 to be the
answer for the Adam A900, Eclipse 700, Diamond F-Jet, Citation Filly or other
flyers to be named later.
"We're working with several airframers," Leonard says.
"There are at least three serious opportunities."
GE Honda Aero Engines (Booth 3920) was formed last year to
further development of Honda's HF118, which was announced in 2003. "We've got
about 120 engineers working every day to make this a better and better engine,"
Leonard says. The HF118 is seen as the basis for a family of powerplants in the
1,000- to 3,500-pounds-thrust range. GE Honda Aero Engines is a 50-50 joint
venture, although Leonard says that three quarters of the engineers on the
HF118 now are working in Tokyo.
They and their colleagues in Cincinnati are talking
advantage of the time difference to effectively maintain "a 24-hour-a-day collaboration,"
Leonard says.
"It's almost better than co-locating," he told Show News.
HF118 improvements include a fuel burn reduction of 5% and a
15% reduction in weight compared with the HF118-2 iteration that powered the
HondaJet unveiled at this past summer's Oshkosh gala. "By incorporating
lighter, higher-temperature materials and engine-cycle design enhancements, the
joint company has been able to efficiently reduce the engine core size," says a
release.
A core engine has been run in Japan and the goal is for a full
engine incorporating the improvements to run in early 2007.
GE Honda is targeting an industry-leading 5,000 hours prior
to first major overhaul with no interim hot-section inspection, and says it can
get there in part by using GE's proprietary N6 single-crystal nickel alloy for
the turbine blades. N6 is being used on GE's GEnx engine for Boeing 787 and
Airbus A350. GE Honda is applying GE's wide-chord swept aerodynamic forward fan
technology from the GE90 series too.
"You continue to modify the engine until you lock in an
airframer," Leonard says, noting that GE has most of the marketing
responsibility for the GE Honda jv.
As for the Embraer competition, in which GE Honda, Pratt
& Whitney Canada, and Williams vied to power the Brazilian's new Very Light
Jet, "We walked away," Leonard says. He cites "a commercial decision." Embraer,
in other words, demanded too much in the way of a low price.
P&WC's PW617F was picked to power the new airplane. "The
real winner," says Leonard, "was Embraer."
Honda's HondaJet Is a Separate Project
The four-place HondaJet, which made its public debut at the
Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture 2005 meeting in Oshkosh on July
28, represents an activity of Honda R&D Americas, Inc., separate from the
GE Honda engine program.
Besides its HF118 engines, HondaJet design innovations
include a natural-laminar flow (NLF) wing and fuselage nose, an advanced
all-composite fuselage structure, and an over-the-wing engine-mount
configuration that's said to eliminate fuselage structure, yielding more interior
space. That feature, although patented, has been seen before on the German VFW
614, a 44-seat twinjet airliner developed in the late 1960s-early 1970s by
VFW-Fokker.
"HondaJet's construction and testing in the U.S.," said unit
vp and HondaJet project leader Michimasa Fujino, is "evidence of Honda
R&D's continued growth and deepening roots in America."
