Waypoints: The rest of the story

The proof of concept aircraft had flown in December 2003. There had been a few sightings in the following 15 months, but the company was tight-lipped, barely acknowledging that it existed and offering few details.

“So this is a media event?” I asked.

“No, just you. If you’re interested, you can be the first one to tell the story. They plan to unveil it at Oshkosh,” Beeler said. A resident of Greensboro, she had become a communications advisor for the nascent aircraft company.

And so began a months-long odyssey of telling the story of what we today know as the HondaJet Elite, built by Honda Aircraft Co. The company didn’t exist then; nor did the mammoth factory complex at Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport. All of the secretive development was done out of a couple of nondescript hangars on the opposite side of the field. There was no Honda branding anywhere, although if you looked closely you would notice a preponderance of Honda and Acura automobiles in the parking lot.

The company’s only request was that I not share the story any earlier than the August 2005 issue of AOPA Pilot, the issue scheduled to be at Oshkosh.

And so on April 25, 2005, AOPA Senior Photographer Mike Fizer and I launched in my Bonanza for the 1.7-hour flight southwest. We were met on the ramp by Rich Gritter, who had been quietly doing much of the test pilot work on the proof-of-concept airplane.

Gritter ushered us through a plain white door into a maze of office cubes and ultimately to a conference room where we were introduced to Michimasa Fujino, the aircraft’s designer.

Fujino started at Honda working on automotive anti-lock braking systems, but quickly volunteered for the aviation program Honda was tinkering with in the 1980s. He began sanding composite molds for the MH02, an unusual high-wing business jet Honda designed and flew for 170 hours at Mississippi State University. The MH02 had its two engines mounted above the wings, a key design feature that would find its way a decade later onto the HondaJet.

And while the over-the-wing engine mount (OTWEM, as Honda calls it) is the most obvious and unusual feature of the HondaJet, it is just one element that Fujino brought to develop an airplane with the stated goal to outperform competitive aircraft on cabin size, fuel consumption, and cruise speed. The OTWEM was designed to reduce drag and to allow for a constant contour cabin, providing more passenger or baggage space because the fuselage doesn’t need to narrow at the aft end to accommodate the engine nacelle structure at the back of most business jets. To further reduce drag, Fujino designed a new natural laminar flow aluminum wing section and a laminar flow nose section. Those, combined with a co-cured composite fuselage, give the HondaJet significant speed and efficiency advantages over competitive airplanes, especially the Cessna Citation CJ2, which was the main competitor at the time.

After hours of technical briefings, Fujino escorted us to a ramp where we were given a detailed walkaround of the stunning blue-and-white proof-of-concept airplane. Fizer was busy taking photos, but was told he couldn’t shoot the airplane from the rear. Apparently, the company wasn’t quite ready for the world to see detailed images of the aft shape of the engine pylons.

Later, we took the aft double doors off of my Bonanza as Fizer strapped into the back. Fujino climbed into the right seat next to me and we taxied out with the stunning new HondaJet trailing us. Fizer clicked away for 90 minutes over the North Carolina countryside. Fujino held a small video camera up to the window, grinning as he saw from the air for the first time his dream take flight.

As always, Fizer delivered beautiful photos, and the HondaJet made the cover of AOPA Pilot’s August 2005 issue. At Oshkosh, the HondaJet made several passes in front of the crowd before taxiing into what was then called Aeroshell Square for about a three-hour visit, surrounded by mobs of people anxious to know more.

We all know the rest of the story. Honda made the decision shortly thereafter to continue the program and a decade later the airplane was certified. I had the chance to fly it for the first time in May 2016, 11 years and a month after first seeing it. This summer, Honda celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the Oshkosh debut with a flashy new corporate video. Time does fly.

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