It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…It’s a Honda Jet!

A favorite customer of ours at the cafe named Tim drops by his copy of the Aircraft Owners and Pilot’s Association magazine, called the AOPA Pilot. I have always been intrigued with flying and with aircraft, so I gave it a skim.

Very light jets are the new buzzword in aviation….opening up ownership of small jets to thousands more people and changing jet ownership from an exclusive rich man’s club to something that mere millionaires can afford. Many smaller airports too, are gearing up, these are where the small jets will take off and land, avoiding the bigger airports with much higher landing fees and fewer slots.

I found out that Honda makes jets. Yes, it’s true, you will be able to buy a sleek VLJ, or very light jet, in the near future with the famous reliability of a Honda. The website too, was sleek and very cool, showing the little jet taking off with its jaunty two-color paint job and leather interior with room for three passengers plus the pilot. They can cruise almost 1200 miles on a tank of fuel, at about 420 miles per hour. Honda’s new offering will come with a $3.5 million price tag, when it becomes available in 2010.

Diamond Aircraft Industries has an even cheaper model, in a category called personal jets. Their model, another four-seater called the D-Jet, will cruise at 362 mph for 1350 nautical miles. The price is right–$1.38 million–and more than 125 orders have placed so far.