ANN's Exclusive Interview With Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn

"Last year at Oshkosh," Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn began, "we fully intended to fly on the first day of the convention. We were bringing in a Jumbotron, and we were going to 'broadcast' the first flight, at the show."

"We're nothing if not aggressive," he noted; but, as the little things that always crop up, cropped up, he didn't get that broadcast going. "...but we're not stupid." What happened? "We were ready... Williams was anything but." Eclipse had held its rollout celebration just days earlier, and it was, um, 'close.' They had planned to bring the airplane out under its own power, but "just one was working." The roll-out was made without the engine noise.

On August 26, 2002, the Eclipse 500 made its first flight (right). "The NBAA convention [held immediately thereafter] was wonderful." There were problems, though. Eclipse was not impressed by the  performance of the Williams EJ22.

"Three days after that flight, Williams came in to the factory with a 5-hour presentation: 'Here's how we're going to solve all the problems,' they said." Raburn told us that was the first time they had acknowledged that the problems even existed.

Time's A-wasting.

"We were supposed to have certified engines in May of this year, for us to get the airplane certified by December," Raburn said. "In October 2002, they announced -- they didn't confer with us -- that they would slip certification to November." Why didn't Raburn cut and run at that time? "We were still committed -- we had spent millions. We were profoundly troubled, and we were concerned about those engines. We said so at NBAA."

Things hadn't gone well in Walled Lake (MI), Williams' HQ. "By October 1, Williams had tested about half their 'fixes' -- and not one of them worked," Raburn said. "They tested in non-real-world conditions. For instance, they would blow-start the engines. The starters we got would fail after about every 25 starts. We finally rigged up a bucket of ice to run tubing through, to blow refrigerated air through the starters." Williams, too, had been aggressive in their delivery program, trying two novel starters, neither of which, Mr. Raburn said, worked very well.

Eclipse developed a self-start module which didn't work too well, either, Raburn noted.

Eventually, he said, "They went to a conventional starter that was built for 400 amps, and pumped 600 amps through it."

So, Vern said, "by mid-October of last year, we realized that the engine was just too delicate. We weren't ready to accept their two standard positions:

• yes, there is a problem; send money; or
• we have it fixed, but there's no guarantee."

Indignation was the next phase.

The clock was running, and Raburn said patience was wearing thin. "They [Williams] were offended that we questioned anything they were doing -- everything, to them, was an airframe problem... Eclipse management finally convinced the Board that the problems were not going to get solved. The Board was sympathetic, but wanted to be sure. They hired a world-class consultant -- everybody uses him, and everybody agrees he's tops -- and told Williams he would look into things. The Board demanded that the consultant have access to everything at Williams that pertained to our program -- they hadn't let us see much of anything until then." Raburn continued, noting the good news and the bad.

The good news was that, "Our expert was given everything;" and the bad news was that he wrote, "a scathing report, that said Williams was 2, maybe 3 years from certification. Williams had never done such things. Some of the things they were trying to do had never been done, by anyone, on any size engine."

Raburn took a deep breath. "Finally, I got permission from the Board, and kicked them out. There was a lot of gnashing of teeth... We had a legal argument; they had a contract. We could get into the business of suing people, sort of 'Eclipse LLC,' and let the Eclipse [airplane] meanwhile just kind of go away; or we could terminate the agreement."

Facing the great unknown of just what suitable engine would become available, Eclipse set about testing two sides of the market: it asked its customers which jet engine producer they would prefer, and they asked manufacturers what engines would be available, and in what timeframe.

"This was a very difficult time, Raburn remembered, "even though we had our vision, these are BIG companies -- and they had to act in a way in which they weren't accustomed to acting. Each company had its 'Eclipse supporters' inside, and each group of supporters needed to work hard to convince its Board."

Tension built, as the time ticked away...

"We were fighting for our lives," Raburn recalled, "and they were making $100 million decisions in what was an unquestionably an unfriendly economy, and an unfriendly environment, overall."

"It's remarkable," Vern said, "that a Fortune 25 company, within 75 days, went from an initial decision to an official Memorandum of Understanding. Pratt deserves a ton of credit. All those stereotypes -- that big companies can't make decisions, that big companies can't move, that big companies don't even listen to customers -- all those stereotypes got blown out the window at Pratt."

Everything was different with P&W.

"Pratt has a very different approach to engineering than Williams," Raburn said. "Williams just isn't as analytical." For instance? "When Pratt & Whitney got much better than expected SFC (specific fuel consumption) on the 625 than they predicted, they ordered a whole new program, put the engines back on the aircraft, to determine why. When Williams had that kind of thing happen, they just adjusted from that point forward."

The future is now.

"Pratt is putting a lot of their own money into this," Mr. Raburn noted. "The 600 series [engine] is the end of the line for the PT-6, for that whole class of transport turboprops. You'll always have propellers, but for transportation, the propellers' days, or at least years, are numbered."

Just to be sure:

"An informal survey we took among a hundred of our customers -- we admit, we didn't do it scientifically -- gave us an interesting result," Raburn added. "We asked them, among the four -- GE, Rolls-Royce, Honeywell, and Pratt & Whitney -- which they would prefer to power their airplanes (assuming all manufacturers could do it), which would they pick. 100% -- really, every one -- picked Pratt." So did Eclipse.

FMI: www.eclipseaviation.com