Big News With New Eclipse Project Canada Jet

The Eclipse 500, which grew into the mature product known as the Eclipse 550, is in the rearview of new product development for Eclipse Aerospace, a division of ONE Aviation, which acquired the much-discussed personal jet maker early last year. But the new product, being developed under the less-than-top-secret name, the Canada Project, is going full speed ahead with major announcements of engines and avionics partners.

Courtesy of ONE Aviation

If you figured the name Canada was leading towards the use of a Canadian engine, guess again. Eclipse announced that it would use the Williams FJ-33-5A-12 engines---which are also on the Cirrus Vision Jet (well, one of them is, anyway)---on its emerging twin jet project. The engines on the Eclipse will each turn out 1,900 pounds of thrust, 100 pounds of thrust more than the same engine on the Cirrus product. To complement the new engines, the wingspan of the 550 will be stretched two feet on each side, allowing a total 70 additional gallons of fuel, to accommodate the slightly thirstier (but still super efficient) Williams engines.

The avionics choice is big news. Saddled from its inception by avionics woes, Eclipse ultimately solved its avionics problems with a nicely workable system Avio by IS&S, but that choice, brought on by necessity, was not a strong selling point. To rectify that, Eclipse has announced the new model will sport the Garmin G3000 flight deck, the same, again, as the Cirrus Jet. The advanced suite will feature three touch controllers, impressive autoflight capability and a far more user-friendly interface than the Avio suite.

Eclipse had previously announced performance targets for the new jet, with a range of 1,400 nm and a top cruise speed of 385 knots (a ten knot boost over the 550), but today it increased that range by 70 miles at the same fast cruise speed while keeping its 43,000 foot certified ceiling.

Learn more at ONE Aviation.

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Isabel GoyerWriter

A commercial pilot, editor-in-Chief Isabel Goyer has been flying for more than 40 years, with hundreds of different aircraft in her logbook and thousands of hours. An award-winning aviation writer, photographer and editor, Ms. Goyer led teams at Sport Pilot, Air Progress and Flying before coming to Plane & Pilot in 2015.