Honda out to shake up market with 1st jet next year

* Honda sees minimum 25% share of small business jet market
* HondaJet aims to be the Civic of small business jets -exec
* HondaJet to up ante on Cessna, Embraer
* Sees demand for small jets growing as users downsize -exec
* Wants to enter Brazil, China earlier than planned

By Chang-Ran Kim
TOKYO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co expects to grab at least a quarter of the world market for small business jets soon after delivering its first aircraft next year, achieving the company's long-standing goal of taking to the skies, an executive said.

Honda, Japan's No.3 car maker and the world's biggest manufacturer of motorcycles and engines, is in the final stages of getting its $4.5 million HondaJet certified. It aims to ramp up the pace of production to 80 a year in the first half of 2013.

Honda received more than 100 orders for the seven-seater jet in three days when it began taking orders in 2006, promising a quieter engine, 20 percent better fuel economy over competing models and operational costs of two-thirds or less.

It has not disclosed an updated number of orders, but Michimasa Fujino, a Honda executive and CEO of its North Carolina-based subsidiary, Honda Aircraft Company, said it held a backlog of about three years from orders taken through its nine dealerships in North America and Europe.

"I'm very optimistic about our prospects," Fujino, who initiated Honda's foray into aviation research in 1986, told a small group of reporters at the automaker's Tokyo headquarters on Monday.

"We're doing with HondaJet what the Civic did to American cars from the 1960s. Our competitors are still producing with technology from the 1990s," he said, referring to Textron Inc's Cessna and Brazil's Embraer SA, which now dominate the 200-a-year small business jet market.

The Civic, known for its reliability, durability and mileage, has consistently been among the United States' best-selling cars since its launch in 1973, forcing industry giants such as General Motors Co to follow suit with cars to meet the country's tighter emissions regulations.

Honda's ambition of making jets traces back to its iconic founder, Soichiro Honda. The HondaJet will make Honda the only car maker in the world to build its own aircraft.

Its engine is made by a joint venture between Honda and General Electric Co.

Honda Aircraft is aiming to turn a profit by 2018, Fujino said.

BRAZIL, CHINA CLAMOURING FOR JETS
The business jet industry is expecting a rebound in sales this year after the global economic crisis hammered sales over the past three years.

While the small business jet market has traditionally been limited to North America and Europe so far, Fujino said he was fielding about a call a week from China, both from prospective buyers and eager dealers, while interest was also greater than he anticipated in Brazil, India and the Middle East.

"Right now we want to focus on delivering on the orders that we have, but I'd like to enter Brazil and China earlier than we'd initially planned," he said, declining to specify a timeframe. New demand from emerging markets could expand the global small-jet market to about 300 a year, he said.

Fujino said he was also seeing more interest in the smallest end of the market as medium-sized jet users look to downsize to get more for their fuel, much like the trend in the car industry.
"Most of our customers are owners of small- and medium-sized businesses, and many are looking to get the most out of the jets that they need," he said.

With operational costs of about $1,000-$1,200 an hour, HondaJet could make travelling in a group of five or six cheaper and more efficient than flying commercially between small cities, he said. Competitors offer at best $1,800 by comparison, he added.

Honda Aircraft will add 300-350 factory staff to bring its total workforce to around 1,000 in the first half of 2013, Fujino said.

Source;
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/honda-jet-idUSL4E8CU1TM20120130

HondaJet Likely To Be First Of A Family

By George C. LarsonGreensboro, N.C.

As Honda Aircraft begins its sixth year, it is advancing cautiously but relentlessly toward the 2012 scheduled certification of its $4.5 million HA-420 HondaJet.

One pacing item for the airplane’s overall approval is its turbofan engine, the HF-120. A product of GE Honda Aero Engines, the powerplant, equipped with a full authority digital engine control (Fadec), first ran in 2009 and became available for testing on a conformal aircraft for the first time in 2010. Its developers report “steady progress” and expect to receive FAA certification of the 2,095-lb.-thrust engine by year-end.

Although the aircraft program has been delayed by more than a year, the Honda organization appears to be unhurried—paced, no doubt, by the precipitous drop in the global economy and subsequent fall-off in light-jet sales. Meanwhile, it continues to be guarded about the precise health of the order book, which has stood at “over 100” for years now.

The company says aircraft testing has proceeded on schedule, and the conformal aircraft, which first flew in December 2010, recently surpassed its specified 420-kt. true airspeed with a flight to 425 kt. Five aircraft are to be involved in the certification trials.

In an industry familiar with failed startups, a visit to Honda Aircraft’s Greensboro, N.C., headquarters at Piedmont Triad International Airport makes clear very quickly that one of the world’s largest automakers is in the aircraft business for the long haul. The tidy campus, and the offices and workspaces contained therein, are austere and functional, in keeping with the company’s culture. But the amount of investment in evidence and 263,000-sq.-ft. production facility leaves no doubt that Honda is looking beyond this first light jet and toward follow-on products.

CEO Mishimasa Fujino only hints at that scenario, saying, “We cannot sustain a company with one product.” Future models might not feature the HondaJet’s unique engine-over-wing design, he has said, but would likely incorporate concepts that are equally innovative.

The company could have reduced the amount of its bet by outsourcing much of the testing and research on both its original proof-of-concept aircraft and the production conforming models in FAA certification testing now. But Honda decided to do it all in-house, and has not scrimped in the process.

One employee estimates the total investment in buildings and equipment at roughly $100 million, but that seems low. On campus are complete full-scale structural test rigs equipped with dozens of computer-controlled actuators, an advanced system-integration test facility that “flies” a virtually complete airplane as represented by its principal systems, and a fully staffed telemetry facility that can capture 2,500 data streams.

This is not to say that Honda is not availing itself of numerous suppliers from all over the world.

The plant as configured now is planned around assembly of finished components, not ab initio manufacture. Just one example: Hampson Aerospace of Grand Prairie, Texas, a subsidiary of a parent company in the U.K., will provide completed empennage assemblies. And more: GKN Aerospace, a composites fabricator in Tallassee, Ala., supplies fuselage components. Avcorp, a subcontractor in British Columbia, will supply parts of the wing. Garmin’s G3000 avionics will light up the panel.

Aircraft will follow two parallel paths and emerge from the now completed final assembly facility, empty for the moment, then undergo systems installation, completion and painting at Greensboro.

Fujino expresses satisfaction with the Carolina workers, citing “good quality” and “a strong work ethic.”

The workforce is young—tablet notebooks are everywhere—with some notable experienced heads such as Mark Ard, vice president of engineering and a former Gulfstream executive, in key management slots. Fujino notes that just four years ago the company had 40 employees; now the figure is 600-700, with another 200-300 expected in 2012 when production gets under way in earnest.

The light jet’s legend started as Fujino’s vision and a cursory sketch in 1997. The unconventional engine arrangement employing overwing mounting is said to save room in the fuselage for a total of 66 cu. ft. of baggage (9 cu. ft. in a forward compartment and 57 aft of the cabin; it’s not accessible in flight). The combination of drag-reducing natural laminar flow over the wing’s advanced airfoil and the unusually shaped bulbous nose are what Honda says provides up to 30% gains in efficiency over the competition. Efficiency may sell on paper, but Honda appears to be placing more of its marketing bet on cabin appeal. To that end, the Greensboro facility has a complete and well-equipped design studio.

Fujino says the single-pilot-certified version is marketed primarily to individuals and corporations rather than to fleet buyers, but the company portrays a 2+6 seating arrangement as well. The HondaJet faces stiff competition, particularly from Embraer’s Phenom 100 and the M2, Cessna’s new successor to the Citation CJ1+.

Photo Credit: George C. Larson/AWST
GEORGE LARSON/AVIATION WEEK

Source;

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2011/10/10/AW_10_10_2011_p61-375968.xml&headline=HondaJet%20Likely%20To%20Be%20First%20Of%20A%20Family&next=10

HondaJet production nears

GREENSBORO — The recently completed production plant at Honda Aircraft Co. sits empty except for several yellow holding carts and some blue work desks.

Before long, this 6-acre-plus building — one part of a $100 million investment — will teem with activity as several hundred workers begin building the company’s $4.5 million HondaJet.

Honda officials said the company should begin delivering the light business jets in the later half of next year, right after it secures Federal Aviation Administration certification.

“Mass production will start early next year,” Michimasa Fujino, Honda Aircraft’s president and chief executive officer, said after a tour of the company’s operation at Piedmont Triad International Airport. “It’s difficult to define when.”

It will require another 250 to 300 employees, boosting the company’s workforce on Ballinger Road to nearly 1,000.

“It changes every day,” Fujino said of the employment level, which now totals 650.

Still, they perfectly match the high-tech manufacturing jobs that local economic development officials want to attract to the area as it moves from more traditional manufacturing associated with textiles, tobacco and furniture.

“This is exactly the outcome we hoped for when we landed the Honda project here,” said Dan Lynch, president of the Greensboro Economic Development Alliance. “The project continues to grow. These are the types of jobs we have been talking about creating.”

After Tuesday’s tour, Fujino hinted that the company would not stop with HondaJet but refused to say what might follow or when.

“It’s too early to tell,” the 50-year-old engineer said. “Honda cannot sustain business by one model. Aerospace has to grow.”

That’s clear from a rare, behind-the-scenes look at Honda Aircraft.

On Tuesday, the company invited more than 40 business and aviation reporters from the U.S., Europe and Mexico to see the state-of-the art business.

“Generally speaking,” Fujino said, “Honda does not show its facilities.”

Visitors toured the company’s delivery room, where customers from around the world will pick up their jets; various testing areas; the design studio; and the telemetry room, where engineers follow the plane’s test flights.

In late December, they monitored the maiden flight of the first production-quality HondaJet.
The company made a production of the event, bringing in film crews in a chase plane and a helicopter to record the flight. Company employees stood in the cold to watch it all and cheer the pilots as they returned from the successful flight.

“It was right before Christmas,” said Stephen Keeney, the company’s senior manager of corporate affairs. “It was the best Christmas present any of us could have had.”
The flight proved that Honda could design, build and prepare a jet for FAA testing.

Tuesday’s visitors saw a video of the event, which Fujino called “a big milestone.”

The day’s activities gave officials a chance to use the airplane for show-and-tell.

Al Lawless, chief flight test engineer, talked about how easily the plane could hit 420 knots.

“We had a little extra,” Lawless said of the speed test. “Our airplane is a rocket.”

Warren Gould, chief test pilot and manager of flight operations, talked about how well the jet handled.

“We really believe the airplane is going to be a pilot favorite,” Gould said. “We have a lot of the best parts of a lot of airplanes.”

By the time the tour reached Jim Hranica, an official in the production building, he didn’t have much to show.

“We don’t have too much going on right now,” Hranica said. “We’re getting this area set up for production.”

Source;
http://www.news-record.com/content/2011/07/12/article/hondajet_production_nears