What exactly is the point of this site? Sounds a lot like a one-man picket line. Is the person who runs it a former fired employee? One who didn't get severance? One who had a loud fight and still feels the need to gloat over the issue? Can he not move on?
The claims that Eclipse has made over the years have been outlandish and insulting to one's intelligence, from the customers who would be taking a thousand aircraft right off the bat to start their own six seat airline, to the claims made before the engine swap.
However, in an industry where progress and technology is somewhat stymied, where we see bigger and better business jets untouchable by most of the public, and where liability insists that we stick with world war II technology, the idea that someone might actually overcome the obstacles and produce a new product apparently just sticks in some folks craw.
I've run into the Eclipse folks a few times. I took airplanes to shows for display at a couple of shindigs where they wouldn't even talk to me in my lowly pilot shirt and epaulettes...I didn't look wealthy enough, apparently. At one show, they did talk to me, gave me a hat, chatted for a while. I don't care either way; if they can field a product that pleases the public that's paying, more power to them, and I hope they do very well.
I think the idea of the ballistic parachute on the Cirrus is a ridiculous idea. A sales gimmick, and it's often used by people who probably should have been cleansed out of the gene pool. Often for stupid pilot tricks, often unnecessarily, often in places where the pilot should never have gone, and for reasons the pilot should never have encountered. None the less, I'm not buying the airplane. The customers who use the system are paying for it, and it matters to them. I can squawk all I like, it won't amount to a hill of beans.
The fact is that the folks at Cirrus have managed to field a new aircraft over the past years in the face of an industry that's been in the dump. It's managed to modernize, to meet customer expectations, and to lift the industry in the process. I imagine the same can be said for Eclipse, Adam aircraft, and others out there. I may not even care for their products (can't say, as I've not flown them yet). All the same I wish them the best of success in their efforts, and w(h)eather I like their products or not, I'll be cheering on their efforts as I have done, to date.
