With high hopes for more sales in Latin America, Honda Aircraft’s HA-420 HondaJet made its debut late last week at Aero Expo Panamá Pacífico, the second-annual edition of the Central American business aviation show. According to Ryan Ramos, Honda Aircraft director of sales for Latin America and the Southeast U.S., the red HondaJet (N250SS) was well received at the show, with numerous aircraft owners, universities and training organizations taking interest in the twinjet.

N250SS made one stop at Miami Executive Airport on the trip from its base in Greensboro, North Carolina, to Panama, encountering 35-knot average headwinds on the Miami-Panama leg, he noted. The jet completed the 1,040-nm flight between Miami and Panama in three hours, seven minutes. “Most attendees asked if the HondaJet could fly nonstop from Panama to Miami, so we were able to tell them that it could not only do that, but also the return trip, with headwinds,” Ramos told AIN.

The majority attendees at the show were from Panama, Guatemala and Colombia, Ramos said, though other Latin American countries were also represented. Regarding prospects in the region, he said that Honda Aircraft is most enthusiastic about the business aviation market in Panama, which at 4.5 percent has one of the highest annual GDP growth rates in Latin America.

This marked the third airshow debut this month for the HondaJet, behind the Sun ’n’ Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida, and ABACE in Shanghai.