The US Federal Aviation Administration spent most of last week at Eclipse Aviation poring over the first production data of the Eclipse 500. If successful, the review will yield a certificate of airworthiness for the aircraft, allowing Eclipse to deliver it to Jet Alliance more than two months later than originally planned.

Because Eclipse is yet to secure its production certificate, the FAA must perform a detailed review on each aircraft. Despite this, Eclipse says it could deliver 10 of the very light jets this year. It has 36 aircraft in various phases of production, with 12 in the "late, late" stages of assembly. Aircraft number two is to go to jet-taxi operator DayJet.




Source: Flight International