Turbine Pilot: From the editor

At one point, ultralights were seen as the answer to boosting the pilot population. The theory went that once ultralight pilots got tired of going really slow and being unable to fly very far, they’d move up to conventional, certified piston singles. Didn’t happen. Ultralight pilots were happy in their clique, and few moved up. Plus, many crashes gave ultralights a bad name.

Then it was the Light Sport aircraft movement. LSA designs were more substantial, had much better performance, and relaxed medical standards would make them tempting to pilots moving down from bigger singles—and up from ultralights or older, tube-and-fabric antique-style airplanes. Didn’t happen. Many LSA prices exceeded the $100,000 threshold—and beyond. In a market where good, used, faster, longer-legged conventional piston singles with four seats and higher payloads prevail at prices well under six figures, most prospects walked away from LSAs.

Then along came the very light jet (VLJ) concept. Here, the theory was that pilots tired of flying larger piston singles and twins would eagerly step up to personal-size jets. In the early 2000s, there were estimates that a total of 5,000 VLJs would soon fill the skies. The increased traffic count was even used as an argument for levying $100-per-flight user fees to cover the ATC NextGen modernization program. But VLJs, with $2-million to $4-million price tags, faced the same problem as LSAs. For the money, their performance and payloads were well below those of nice, used jets with bigger cabins—and cockpits often retrofitted with more modern avionics. Sure, there are a few true VLJs—such as the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, and the Eclipse—but others have bitten the dust. So VLJs happened, but not enough to create an aluminum overcast.

It’s difficult for manufacturers to judge the demand for new designs. They are often reduced to making educated guesses that sometimes force them to bet their companies on a single airplane.

It happens to the best and brightest of them. Take the 1994 decision to bring the huge Airbus A380 to market. Airbus was banking on the need for a 500- to 800-passenger behemoth to service large hub airports and take market share away from Boeing’s 747-400 and 777 models. But the A380 was too big, wouldn’t make money unless every seat on every flight was filled, and relied on big hubs—which Airbus still believes is the way of the future. The Boeing 777 held fewer passengers, but it could also span oceans, and it can better access smaller airports, making point-to-point flights possible. Then came more competition in the form of the 787 Dreamliner.

Last I checked, Airbus sold 222 A380s, 102 of them to Emirates Airlines. Emirates recently placed a firm order for 20 more, which could keep its production line running until 2029. Then, nothing. Today, there are two A380s sidelined and up for sale by Singapore Airlines—the launch customer! They’re parked along a taxiway at the Tarbes-Ossun-Lourdes Airport in Tarbes, France—the home of Daher’s TBM series of turboprop singles. There they bleach in the sun, vainly awaiting customers. The scrap heap looms. In the market for a really big business jet? Or maybe a nearby TBM 930 is more your style.

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