Cool Planes That Never Made The Cut
There are countless reasons why a plane might never make it to the finish line. In some cases, that’s a real shame.
On opening day of Oshkosh AirVenture 2007, the Very Light Jet (VLJ) manufacturer Eclipse Aviation was celebrating the certification and first deliveries of its Eclipse 500 twinjet.
It was simultaneously going through great financial distress, and that was no secret to any of the hundreds of people at the company's press conference at its exhibit on opening day. And few in attendance would be surprised when, about a year later, things started to go south for Eclipse, resulting in its bankruptcy, possibly the biggest such collapse in the history of light general aviation.
But what did surprise everyone was when Eclipse on that July day introduced a brand-new jet, the Eclipse EA400, a single-engine offshoot of its EA500. People were flabbergasted. The question on everyone's lips was, how could the company, which was under extreme financial strain, spend precious resources to build a second model?
The answer was, it really was indefensible, despite the company's explanations of how it was financing the program. In retrospect, these dozen years after Eclipse went down in flames, the one thing I find myself thinking is, wasn't that single-engine jet really cool?
It, like a number of other intriguing models across the decades and across the industry, never really stood a chance. Many were, like the EA400, victims of economic factors beyond their builders' control, and others were abandoned in the wake of corporate decisions not to pursue the program, some of which look foolish in the luxury of 2020 hindsight. Others were the victims of what's likely the second-most-common reason for the failure of a design---that is, after the failure to find enough cash to build it---the inability to find the right engine for the plane.
The pressures on GA plane makers are so great that, if anything, it's a wonder that there aren't more cool planes like these in our informal lineup of cool planes that never were.
Piper PWA-8 Skycycle
Toward the end of World War II, Piper, like just about every other light plane manufacturer, figured that the big business it was doing with the government selling liaison planes based on the J-3 wouldn't last forever, so it planned to transition to a civilian lineup. One of the planes it floated was the Skycycle, a single-seat taildragger, the first prototype of which was built from an auxiliary belly fuel tank of the F-4U Corsair fighter. Though it was originally outfitted with a two-cylinder opposed engine, the later prototype got a four-cylinder Lycoming engine, the O-145, which would one day grow into the O-235 series that powered a later Piper, the PA-38 Tomahawk. The Skycycle seemed to have a lot to recommend it, a modern-looking, low-wing design with a cool bubble canopy, side-by-side seating and a modern four-cylinder opposed powerplant. And was it ever cute. But, alas, Piper chose to abandon the Skycycle after it had built just two prototypes in order to pursue offshoots of existing, more conventionally Piper-looking designs---a pathway it would follow until the late '50s, when it launched the thoroughly modern, hugely successful Cherokee lineup. And, to be fair, single-seat GA planes are real unicorns.
Piper Sky Sedan
A far more practical Piper that never made it to market, the PA-6 Sky Sedan had the looks of a really fun family flyer, but it was a victim of the post-war crash in plane building that claimed a number of GA manufacturers that had gone all in on building small planes for veterans returning from war. There was, as it turned out, a limit to the number of planes that the market would bear, and U.S. aircraft makers mid-decade greatly exceeded that. The Sky Sedan seemed to have it all, too. All-metal construction, seating for four, a modern four-cylinder aero engine, the Continental E-165, a 165-hp six-banger, good speed---an advertised cruise of 150 mph---range of better than 500 miles and a pretty silhouette. One can easily imagine the Sky Sedan growing a nose gear, expanding into a retractable gear model, maybe even a twin. But Piper was in cutting-losses mode and shelved the Sky Sedan, relegating it to the annals of aviation history. The development of new models and new markets would have to wait a decade and a half.
Beech Lightning (Turboprop Baron)
When Beechcraft was looking to add a new upscale model, someone in Wichita came up with a bolt of inspiration to build a single-engine turboprop in the early 1980s. They decided it might make sense to convert a pressurized B-58 Baron to turboprop power. When you think about it, the market was ripe for the idea, and it would be almost a decade before the Pilatus PC-12 and the TBM (then) 700 debuted the idea. Beech got there first, though it abandoned the idea because the Lightning didn't fit the brand's lineage. Specifically, Beech engineers opted for a Garrett engine instead of a Pratt & Whitney PT-6, which was used on the company's King Airs, and there was little love for Garrett engines despite their light weight.
The folks at Beechcraft weren't wrong. Garretts are ungodly loud on the ramp, and their operational complexities, while workable with professional crews, can be beyond inconvenient for private flyers. The Lightning looked great!275 knots at 25,000 feet and a range of 1,250 nm. But the tradeoffs the light and powerful Garrett engines brought with them doomed the Lightning to obscurity.
Bede BD-5B
You might know the BD-5 from its jet-powered version, the BD-5J, which we recently featured in a roundup of Very Light Jets. That plane was in a James Bond movie, and several plied the airshow circuit for years. But the BD-5J is more of a novelty than a practical plane. This is not the case for the BD-5B. It is the only kit plane on our list, but a production version was in the works when Bede Aircraft went belly up in the mid-1970s. The company actually took around 12,000 deposits for the plane, and it delivered more than 5,000 kits, most of those for a purchase price including engine of less than $2,000. Everything slowly ground to a halt as the company searched in vain for a suitable engine for the model. But what a plane.
The BD-5 is a single-seat, single-engine pusher with enviable performance numbers---around 200 knots on just 70 hp. Over the years that Bede tweaked the design, it worked out most of several problems, in part by enlarging a too-small wing and simplifying its systems. And one might quibble that there are plenty of BD-5s out there, but the truth is, there are only around 30 flying examples, of which a few are jet versions. So while Bede Aircraft sold thousands of kits and took many thousands of deposits for a production model that never got close, the story of the BD-5 is that of a fast, cool, efficient and affordable plane that never made it.
Cessna NGP
When it comes to figuring out why airplanes that seemed promising never made it, sometimes, as is the case with the next plane, the Eclipse EA400, it's easy to say. In the case of the Cessna NGP (for Next Generation Piston!later changed to Next Generation Prop), the answer isn't clear. Its origins are pretty easy to guess at, though. Leadership at Cessna likely saw the success of the Cirrus SR22, which was outselling Cessna's entire piston lineup at the time, and it was concerned that the future might pass it by. So the company came up with a composite fuselage, metal-wing fixed-gear, 300-hp class piston-engine model that would eventually form the basis for single-engine Cessnas to come. In 2006, the company brought the prototype to Oshkosh AirVenture, where it made quite an impression. There was even talk of going in the direction of diesel or even turboprop power. But things stopped happening with the plane shortly after its Oshkosh launch. The following year, Cessna purchased the assets of Columbia Aircraft, which made a model very similar to the Cirrus SR22, and the Cessna NGP was abandoned.
Eclipse EA400
The Eclipse 400 is a single-engine, four-seat jet that Eclipse Aviation was just beginning to develop when it went bankrupt in 2009. It had attracted about 30 deposits of $100,000 each, which would-be customers never got back when Eclipse went under. As mentioned in the introduction, the EA400 was a single-engine jet with a lot of promise. Powered by a single Pratt & Whitney PW615 turbofan (the same engine that powers the EA-500 twinjet), the EA400 was a 330-knot cruiser with a range of nearly 1,500 nm. Eclipse said it was aiming for a ceiling of 41,000 feet, but that was an unprecedented number for a single-engine production aircraft, and it's not clear how much of the plane's range was calculated using that very high ceiling. Jets become far more efficient at higher altitudes. But even if you take a couple of hundred miles of range off that reach-goal number, the EA400 would have had numbers in line with the Cirrus Vision Jet, which does seat at least a couple more people.
But it was not to be. The Eclipse EA400 never got close to FAA certification---in fact, Eclipse said it never even started the formal process. Could it have gotten there? Based on what we know of Eclipse's hard-won success in getting FAA approval for its twin-engine EA-500---which is a great flying airplane, by the way---and judging by Cirrus Aircraft's ultimate success with its SF-50 Vision Jet, there's no question that the EA400 could have gotten there, but it would have been a lengthy and expensive endeavor. ONE Aviation, the company that wound up in control of Eclipse's assets, holds the rights to the EA-400, but it has expressed no interest in pursuing that project.
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