At Aero in Friedrichshafen, Germany, this week, Eclipse, under its One Aviation banner, was showing the first completely certified-for-Europe 550, a new-production aircraft that CEO Alan Klapmeier flew from the U.S. Before the show, Klapmeier told us about something we’re hearing more and more: Regulators in both Europe and the U.S. have become much more cooperative and practical. The airplane on display was a new German-registered Eclipse.
In a podcast, Klapmeier told AVweb that the light end of the aircraft market in Europe is vibrant, but there are still issues in using airplanes for transportation. “For transportation, it’s improving and we’ve been really happy with the changes at EASA. For an airplane like the Eclipse, basically everything in Europe is two hours away. It drastically shrinks the time and distance it takes to get anywhere,” Klapmeier said. Eclipse has delivered four airplanes in Europe and hopes to increase its market share in 2016.
As far as production, One Aviation/Eclipse has entirely reconstituted the original assembly line in Albuquerque and although it was offshoring some parts manufacturing for a short period, Klapmeier said the company is taking more work back in house, a trend that’s apparent in other aerospace companies as well.
