AIN Staff

“It comes down to balancing the optimism of the future with the realism of the present,” One Aviation president Alan Klapmeier told AIN, while standing next to the first Eclipse 550 to arrive in China. The aircraft is parked on the static display line this week at ABACE 2017.


Klapmeier was summarizing his hopes and expectations for One Aviation’s success in Asia Pacific, founded on its relationship with local representative Jinggong Group. “Relationships are essential in China,” he said. “The culture and business processes are different enough that it’s almost impossible for us Westerners to understand. So it’s essential to work with people who are working toward the same goal. It’s like having an engineer explain something to a pilot. Both speak a different language, but if they each understand the end-game goal, they can be on the same page.”


His relationship with the Chinese company goes back 10 years. “Jinggong was an investor in the [Eclipse sister company] Kestrel turboprop single, and moved up when those two companies became One Aviation.” Jinggong also operates business aircraft for charter and recently added a Falcon 7X to its available fleet. The company was also a distributor for Cirrus Aircraft, the company that Klapmeier co-founded with his brother.


Jinggong has an order for 20 Eclipse 550s, but the timetable for fulfillment of that order depends on a lot of moving parts, Klapmeier explained, starting with CAAC certification of the aircraft. He said that this approval is “close,” but didn’t want to project a finish date.


In the meantime, One Aviation has initiated a “pause” in production of the Eclipse 550 at serial number 1015. The 550’s slot on the new-aircraft assembly line will ultimately give way to the in-development “project Canada” upgrade, which has longer wings, more range and more powerful engines. But the timing for delivering the Chinese aircraft could mean that the order could end up as a mix of 550s and Canadas, depending on how quickly the latter project proceeds, combined with the CAAC approval of the 500/550.


One reason Klapmeier believes the Eclipse could do well in China is that it can operate from much smaller airports than larger jets—even the small general aviation airports that China plans to sprinkle throughout the country with 800-meter (2,600-foot) runways.


Klapmeier said he ultimately envisions the Eclipse factory to consist of a mix of building new Canadas and remanufacturing or “regenerating” a 500s and 550s, with upgrades to be determined. “That’s what makes the most sense,” he said. “For those who don’t need the extra performance of the Canada, the regenerated 550s would be the less expensive alternative. It just wouldn’t make sense to build new 550s.”

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