There is also an EASA proposal in the works to mandate commercial factors even for private jet ops…
This is much older than EASA and originally was called JAR-OPS2. I’m not the biggest fan of EASA, but we can’t blame them for everything ;-) And as somebody whose income depends on the (somewhat unstable) commercial bizjet sector I’m not so much against these regulations. We do indeed suffer from the competition of the black/grey/illegal operators. One of their selling points is that they can go to places where we are not allowed to go. Equal rights for everybody!
Silvaire: No, Mitsubishi barely exists in the US vehicle market having basically failed in the retail US market…
In Europe I think it is quite the opposite between Honda and Mitsubishi. Honda sells mopeds and lawnmowers here (two or three models of small cars maybe, but I never see them anywhere), wheras Mitsubishi have a reasonsble share in the car and van market.
We do indeed suffer from the competition of the black/grey/illegal operators. One of their selling points is that they can go to places where we are not allowed to go. Equal rights for everybody!
Surely, the issue is not that private ops can use the shorter runways. The issue is that there is some AOC-busting going on. Banning all jets from the shorter runways is a perverse way to stop AOC busting.
Anybody doing AOC busting in a big way is just going to buy some TBM700s, which have a reasonable payload (even better if overloaded – anyway an increase in assumed Vs of say 10kt gives you another 300-400kg of payload 
), and can be picked up for USD1.3M for a half-life-engine specimen. And they can be flown single pilot, which saves a huge amount of money.
Toyota has/had also been playing around with a piston 4-seater for many years.
Honda’s efforts in piston engined GA likewise did not go into production. I’d guess the reason was that they did not see the demographics leading to them re-creating the piston GA market.
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=0e683aae-b532-471d-acd0-dd7337e5873a
What next,
Having read through the Part-NCC and GM/AMC material it doesn’t look like EASA is going to enforce 1,67 factoring of landing distances for example. I’m very interested in this because our CAA (Sweden) along with the “Max Xwind” interpretation is demanding EU-OPS performance for private jet ops. So, whereas everyone else can fly into Shoreham, I can not, legally.
But, back to the Honda jet. Although Honda is well known among car owners in the US, breaking into the Cessna realm of 500, 510 and 525 jets seems like an incredibly risky idea. If Cessna wasn’t putting out new models every now and then, like they didn’t with the pistons, I’d think Honda and Beechcraft would have had a better shot at beating them to the game, just like Cirrus did, sort of. But, I don’t believe it’s going to happen. Nice try though.
Between 1959 and 1975, Honda went from being completely unknown to putting almost all the major existing players in the motorcycle industry out of business. Then in the early 70s they introduced a car, and in a similar period became perhaps the most significant car manufacturer in the world market when considering the combination of sales volume, development of effective business practices, and technological depth. Don’t sell Honda short – overcoming risk with total commitment over time is Honda’s thing 
Having worked with Honda a little I agree with Silvaire, don’t underestimate them!
However, for the segment they are trying to penetrate the Citation 525 series is a terrific package, which is easy to understand, efficient, well equipped, and reliable. The support is incredible and there are lots of type rated pilots around who know them inside out.
On the specifics of the Honda Jet, they are better than their competition in some areas, and worse in others. All of these jets are a compromise between range, speed, runway performance, load, and space.
500/550s and 525 series are the only jets I have real time on, but they are for me an extremely well sorted product that will take some shifting from the top spot in the sector. It didn’t go well for the SJ30, the Diamond Jet or the Grob jet
Would I be right in saying that the Grob failed simply because Grob went bust (having crashed the prototype jet with a customer on board) and Diamond abandoned their jet for other reasons, which one can only speculate on e.g.
I heard that Socata bought the rights to the Grob jet. I believe it was aimed at the PC12 type of market, with a big cargo door.
Yes Grob went bust, but had the jet been a success maybe they wouldn’t have gone? The SJ30 was incredibly fast but has never sold well. The Diamond I agree was an apparently oddly specified project. Eclipse went bust. Beech could not make money out of light jets.
Embraer seem to be doing OK, as do Cessna albeit with some production lines mothballed. They must have some faith in GA as they are buying Beech.
I thought Pilatus had bought the Grob project? In any case they are working on a PC24 or something like that
I heard that Socata bought the rights to the Grob jet.
Yes, but obviously they gave up in the meantime: http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/ainalerts/2012-07-26/socata-will-not-build-grob-jet
I thought Pilatus had bought the Grob project? In any case they are working on a PC24 or something like that
The Pilatus Jet looks similar, but is a completely new design.
On the specifics of the Honda Jet, they are better than their competition in some areas, and worse in others.
It’s hard to tell, because what they publish is very incomplete yet. Especially payload over range and exact landing distance figures are missing – these are the weak points of their competitors. And as I doubt very much that Honda has inventend the warp drive and the matter/antimatter-reactor, it will be their weak points as well.
Anybody doing AOC busting in a big way is just going to buy some TBM700s,…
This will not last much longer than a week, because by then every competitor will have informed every aviation authority about it! What “we” suffer most from are private and/or corporate owners who fly fare-paying passengers that do not belong to their company. My impression is that the smaller the jet, the more this kind of flying takes place, as the larger jet tend to be operated under AOCs, even if the fly mostly for the owner.
… don’t underestimate them!
Certainly not (just looked at some worldwide car sales figures – they are really selling well outside Europe). And I’m pretty sure they did a lot of market research before starting the project. But it has been dragging along for over two decades now with no end in sight and the market has changed a lot in the meantime.
What “we” suffer most from are private and/or corporate owners who fly fare-paying passengers that do not belong to their company
What do you think is the actual arrangement?
Do you mean that a company which owns a jet for corporate use is selling tickets? I can’t see that – only an idiot would do that because of the evidence you leave behind.
What does happen is that sometimes passengers get carried who are not company employees. But that is always going to happen in the corporate jet scenario. It’s normal. What I don’t get is the exact means used to get these people to pay for the transport. To anybody with a brain, it is kind of obvious that something isn’t quite right when you get asked for €5000 to be flown somewhere.
Putting a plane on an AOC is AFAIK done to
