HondaJet
 

Honda announced Friday they will invest 100mill$ in a manufacturing plant in Greensboro N.C.

This will give real competition to both the new Elipcejet, Cessna mustang etc. If Honda makes as good airplanes as cars, it will probably dominate the VLJ market in short time.


Perhaps Toyota will also look into this business in the future....:ok:

Press release here

I think its a funny looking plane...please recall the recent uncontained failure of the CRJ over CO.

I wonder if I would want to sit next to the plane of rotation of this engine? I avoided that area in prop planes.

well, good luck and safe flying.

HondaJet power plant location
 

Anyone heard of a VFW614 have an uncontained? Luftwaffe didn't! nor Cimber Air as I know.

Uncontained failures
 

Uncontained failures (compressor or turbine rotor) have directly hurt pax in the Nord 262 and MD-80. A fan blade knocked out a window of a DC-10, and a pax was ejected as the cabin depressurized. But in each case the aircraft returned to earth with no further damage.

The bad writeoffs were the 1989 Sioux City DC-10 (although over 100 survived); and a Convair 580 in 1967 that had a prop control failure, gross prop overspeed, and a lost prop blade cut the fuselage in two.

The VFW614 only had a production run of 10 planes IIRC so the statistics are pretty sparse - not much of a point to prove.

I doubt the Honda will suffer by comparison.

bomarc Funny? Simply because they have found a weight/cost effective way of placing the motors? Imagine how funny the first Tri-Motor looked?

As to the very small chance of an uncontained engine failure - in the number of hours operated by similar motors...

I know of a 737 that appeared to have an unexpected rudder movement, so I never pax in 737s.

I know of a Ford car, whose engine caught fire and they all died, so I don't travel in Ford cars. :rolleyes:

Uncontained failures can occur on just about any aircraft, but on aircraft like the VFW614 and the HondaJet you're more forcefully reminded of the (remote) possibility, with that d@mn engine "in your face" every time you look out of the window.

Not rational.... purely psychological.... an underwing engine can do exactly the same damage. But one can wonder if the "perceived" danger will cost them a few sales.

What are the implications of having a completely new craft like this vis a vis type rated pilot availability?

The early worm gets the bird! :}

Honda have been doing blurbs about their "jet dreams" for a while now. I came across this link http://www.honda.co.uk/warmtechnology/ a while back while trying to find pics of their robot for my toddler. (You'll have to click on the purple "dreams" square or watch some of the blurb and follow links.)

Some interesting ideas, but, as always, it'll depend how it works in real life.

Bobbsy

I hope that this is a very safe and well received aircraft.

737's did have rudder problems and there is a patch.

the md88 at PNS did kill people

wasn't there a british air tours 737-200 that lost quite a few on the ground?

when we speak of trimotors, do we mean prop trimotors or 727 / trident/ etc?

remember when manned rockets had the people on top and the fuel below? the shuttle looked funny the way it was built and there were no problems...oops I guess I was wrong about that!

Shall we start making bets on how long till an engine separates from the aircraft? :} Nice looking jet though... still unsure of the engine placement but it still looks better than the Diamond D-Jet and the Boeing BWB. :p

I've spent many a happy hour in BAe146/RJs with the engines "in my face" without once worrying about this aspect. When you think about it, a HondaJet (and the VFW614 before it) is just a smaller, twin-engined version of the 146 flying upside down - ergo shouldn't be a problem!