But... Honda Aircraft Company Claims 99.7% Dispatch Reliability

In a letter sent to his company’s fractional share owners, Jet It founder and CEO Glenn Gonzalez—a former Honda Aircraft Company sales director—excoriated his former employer, stating Jet It has done its “best to shield you from Honda’s ineptitude.”

JetClub—Jet It’s European sister company—is also planning to transition away from HondaJet; so says JetClub CEO Vishal Hiremath, who explains: “For similar reasons and issues faced by Jet It in the U.S., we plan to transition away from Honda in the long term. At this time, we have a small fleet and team in Europe, and it is manageable, but the aircraft range, support, and operational restrictions in Europe make it a challenge to operate it. With only one service center and limited training options in Europe, Honda is not going to be on our long-term future fleet plan.”

In his email to Jet It customers, Gonzalez impugned the HondaJet’s reliability and Honda Aircraft Company’s support network referring to them collectively as “not just disappointing, but shocking.”

Gonzalez alleged that the HondaJet’s lack of reliability has cost Jet It over $20-million in off-fleet expenses, stating: “For every nine-days that we fly a HondaJet, it requires six-days of maintenance.”

Jet It plans to repopulate its fractional fleet with Embraer’s Phenom 300 platform. Gonzalez estimates his company’s first two Phenoms, which were acquired on the preowned market, will be in revenue operations before the end of 2022.

Notwithstanding the imminent and tedious prospect of contacting existing Jet It customers for purpose of pitching them the notion of transitioning their ownership stakes to the Phenom 300, Gonzales plans to retain at least part of his company’s HondaJet fleet for Jet It’s charter operations. “Charter demand is variable,” Gonzales opined. “We can turn it off, turn it on.” Conversely, Jet It’s fractional program guarantees aircraft availability.

In his letter to Jet It HondaJet fractional owners, Gonzales writes: “We are incredibly grateful for your patience and understanding. Our service has not met our standards, as it has surely fallen short of yours.” The correspondence continues: “As a believer in the Honda brand, I am incredibly disappointed by the uptime of the HondaJet, and the grossly inadequate support we (and by extension you, our member(s)) have been subjected to by Honda Aircraft Company.”

Responding to Gonzalez’s polemic, a spokesperson for Honda Aircraft Company set forth: “Honda Aircraft Company has been made aware by a few sources about a message sent by Jet It CEO to the Jet It fractional owners. HAC would like to reconfirm our position regarding the HondaJet aircraft fleet reliability and our solid commitment to support the product.”

The retort continued “HAC does not comment on internal operational matters relating to our customers. The HondaJet dispatch reliability remains very high at 99.7%. We work closely with all our customers to assist them to maximize their asset availability, which may be influenced by multiple factors associated with a customer’s operations, such as extended downtimes due to accidents, incidents, pilot, technician availability, maintenance planning, and scheduling, and service center network coordination.”

Stout of heart and capacious of lung, the Honda spokesperson went on: “As the HondaJet fleet continues to grow, we are committed to ensuring that each of our customers around the globe receives the highest quality of service and support, with the supply of parts and factory-trained and certified service technicians available at each of the Authorized Service Center (ASC) locations. With the addition of four new full-service ASCs in the United States and global regions in 2022, we continue to strengthen our service capacity.”

In a recent survey of business jet operators and air-travelers, Honda Aircraft Company scored a 3.04 (of a possible 5.0) rating—the lowest of any bizjet OEM. Embraer scored a 3.28, and Gulfstream Aerospace, which competes in neither the light-jet nor very-light-jet categories, scored a commanding best of 3.70.

Asked to rank very-light-jets, survey participants favored Embraer’s Phenom 100 over the HondaJet by a 56%-to-31% margin, while the Phenom 300 ranked tops in the light jet category with 32% of the vote.

FMI: www.hondajet.com