Honda Aircraft Launches HondaJet Elite | Hacker News Reader

Honda Aircraft Launches HondaJet Elite

flyingmag.com

64 pointsnwatson84 comments

For those curious about the unusual overwing engine pods, Wikipedia says:

"The HondaJet’s overwing engine mount configuration was designed to maximize cabin space,[5] and achieve lower wave drag at a high Mach number."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_HA-420_HondaJet#Design

The source document has more discussion of the issues involved:

http://www.hondajet.com/Content/pdf/FlightInternational_Cove...

The source document is especially helpful. The overwing engine configuration is unusual because it has been an industry-accepted fact that flow interference (specifically, the conversion of the flow from laminar to turbulent) from the wing as the angle of attack increased beyond a few degrees — which happens during take-off, climb, and landing with wing-aerodynamic braking — would have significant-to-catastrophic effects on the engine's intake.

Honda says they managed to find a sweet spot amidst the interference, using computational analysis and wind-tunnel testing. Computational analysis of turbulent flows is much more difficult than laminar flows, and wind-tunnel testing has been traditionally favoured over computational analysis for this reason.

Honda also says they made their own airfoil and made the upper-skin extra smooth to keep the flow more laminar between the wing and the engine.

This is impressive engineering.

EDIT: Just noticed, the document claims the wing had to be made of metal instead of composites " to maintain the contour required for laminar flow".

Is it normal to talk about a "high Mach number" for a subsonic aircraft?

Yes. At high (sub sonic) speed and high altitude, you get close enough to the speed of sound that this starts to matter a lot.

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/35408/what-is-t...

Mach is the better reference. If you quote standard speeds you get into the whole ground/indicated/actual speed/alt issue. Your numbers will always sound wrong to someone. Mach avoids the issue.

The price for the new model is around USD $5.25 Million in case you were wondering...

https://corporatejetinvestor.com/articles/honda-reveals-hond...

Oh. So my tiny SaaS company isn’t quite there yet.

I don't get private jets.

Even if I had Bezos money, I still don't understand why a private jet would ever work out an objectively better experience than flying first class except in very limited circumstances with lots of people.

You'd need to have air crew, storage, fuel, maintenance and I would assume (I know nothing about how this works) a raft of permissions and clearances for every takeoff and landing.

Even if you could easily afford all of the above with your skyscraper-sized cash piles, would it ever be worth the hassle to organize and maintain?

Maybe you have someone handle that for you, but you have to hire them - or hire someone to hire them. When does it end?

I really don't get the appeal.

As an owner, you don’t really get to see or feel any of that. You walk into the terminal, use your pre-screened security pass, so no lines or x-ray, step into the plane and you’re off. Depending on the airport you might be able to drive up to the runway and step directly into the aircraft. You pay a commercial operator for the pilot, hangar and maintenance of the plane.

How does that sound compared to flying coach?

Source: none, I don’t own a private jet.

The obvious answer to this is: because who doesn't want to own a private jet!

A private jet allows you to be anywhere you need to be in the world on a whim. And more importantly it allows you to build your commute around your schedule not the other way around first class or not they won’t wait for you on the tarmac for 3 hours because a meeting is running late nor will they care if you need to be in Tokyo or not when you try to rebook the tickets and the next flight is completely full. If you can’t understand the value of this if you are making Bezos scale decisions then there isn’t anything more I can say. Also for Bezos nor for anyone else is it a hassle to manage this by the time you fly on your own jet your personal life is already run as a corporation.

Also: it opens up a whole world of extra potential point-to-point flights that commercial operators will never operate due to lack of market, limited only by customs ports (for international borders). Want to fly from Nice to LA? No need to spend a couple of hours connecting anywhere, just fly direct.

This is the crux of it, if you're a senior executive your time is often more valuable than the cost of a private jet. Imagine if Bezos can't get to a shareholder meeting because of a delayed flight, there's millions of dollars at stake on every move he makes.

It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale.

>It's the same reason you might get a house cleaner or gardener in, just on a different scale.

While I don't know anyone with a personal Jet I've known a handful of people that essentially grew up with a household staff where they had like 3 to 5 or so people full time supporting the household.

The best explanation for the experience was essentially they had an office manager / executive assistant that they could call on for most things growing up for most of them there was a single point of contact that managed the the staff and they would tell them what they need (I need to buy X, or I need to be in place Y on date Z or I want to have a party for M) and they'll sort it out.

This essentially is needed if you are going to be living in a house "appropriate" to your net worth even starting at a few millions in old money (outside of the US) it comes to a point where you cannot actually manage the house and grounds on your own without it being a full time job and if you actually want to maintain both it's monetary and sentimental value a maintenance staff is nearly mandatory.

Most of us would have trouble keeping up a 2-3 bed apartment running without having a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning service when we work full time, now imagine keeping up an 8-10 bed house with possibly guest quarters and the grounds around it.

This is also one of the reasons that many of these huge houses are not as expensive as one might think as their yearly upkeep cost is pretty darn high.

If you have enough money to afford a private jet, there are companies that will happily take more of your money to handle all of those details for you.

Say you live in Ann Arbor, and have holiday houses in Portland, MA and Colorado Springs...

Never mind that your average week often features a couple of meetings on Wall Street, with lawyers in DC, at the factory in Alabama and the research centre in Raleigh. Then a charity dinner in Boston and a round of golf with the chairman of the board at Hilton Head.

I really don't get the appeal.

It isn't about practicalities, it's about status.

It is not only that you can fly on your own schedule, it is, evenly important, also much easier to get where you actually want. Who says you only want to go to the big hubs, like San Francisco, New York or Frankfurt? What if you wanted to get directly from New York to Montpellier, France? And from there, meet some important clients in their holidays on the German island of Sylt? (and from there back to New York). All those are direct flights with a private jet, all of them are complicated and stop-over flights using airlines. And most of the airports in the world are simply not reachable via Airlines (let's say you want to visit the island of Usedom instead of Sylt). So you not only save the time by having a comfortable direct flight, you also get much closer and thus save money and time on the ground. By the way, if you do not fly alone in your private jet but fill some of the other seats with colleagues/friends... then flying private is also not necessarily more expensive than flying business class. Of course, surely flying private is not friendly to the environment. Then again, it will never be a mean of transportation for the masses.

While I am just starting with my private pilot license this month, I slowly reach a level of income where it starts to have appeal not to drive to work/to the clients any more myself in the morning but simply paying someone a salary for driving me. Already now it would make some economic sense to work/sleep/play during my commutes. So I guess the appeal for someone really rich to fly somewhere in private is a no brainer.

Almost all of that is contracted out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-base_operator

The clearances are fairly easy for small airports and would be handled by the pilot.

The advantages are mostly in getting to pick your own route and timing; useful for CEOs with lots of offices to go to and a holiday home somewhere.

I get the appeal and plenty of others have commented on why it's so appealing so I won't add to that but I will mention that based on what I've found online the biggest negative seems to be that commercial airlines have a much better safety record, if anyone has any first hand experience with stats on this please let me know if the Google results are correct.

I believe that private jets are 5-10x more dangerous than commercial aviation, but still pretty safe. Probably pretty close to commercial aviation if you own or charter through a very reputable outfit like NetJets, don't fly yourself, and don't try to order the pilots to load passengers and baggage above the maximum takeoff weight, takeoff during bad weather because you have to get somewhere, etc.

The appeal of this particular jet is that you can fly it with just one pilot. Just like the cirus vision jet. If you have your own license, you can fly yourself. The appeal of a jet is that you can fly at your own time. If you are having lots of meetings across the country and transporting a team of 5-8 folks. At a running cost of about $2000/hr it's not too bad! The cirrus jet has a running cost of about $800/hr if I recall correctly.

Did you hear about the big tax break jet owner's got this year? :-D

I just looked it up, and you're actually not way off about the hourly operating costs. I was surprised it's that low.

Also, there was no "big tax break" for private jet owners: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-tax-bill-break-p...

They say $1134/hr but actual experience shows it's much higher. It's like MPG. If you drive 50mpg sure, likewise the jet's published hourly operating cost is all about going on cruise speed and not as fast as you can, no headwinds, perfect conditions, cheap insurance, etc. Real world cost is closer to $2000/hr

Yeah, sorry...I meant to say you're NOT way off :) (edited). $2k / hr is probably about right if they're claiming $1134.

You can land at executive airports and avoid any TSA hassles.

General aviation avoids TSA hassles at all airports.

having a private jet is likely not "economical" unless you fly a lot. but it's still a better experience than flying first class in almost every way.

the biggest advantage is that you set the schedule yourself. some routes only have one or two non-stop flights per day. now you have a non-stop flight whenever you want. combined with the fact that you no longer have to show up early to make sure you have time for security (now you never go through security at all, and if you're late the plane waits for you), this is a huge time saver.

you can also have much better accommodations on your own plane. better alcohol, food you actually want to eat, even more comfortable seats, etc. you can guarantee that a child will never scream in your ear or kick the back of your seat.

comparing a private jet to first class is honestly ridiculous, the experiences are leagues apart. i would fly privately if i could remotely afford it. the real question is what advantage is there to owning a plane versus simply chartering them on demand. i assume it just comes down to frequency of travel.

I think you’re overestimating the need to manage everything. There are hundreds of companies in the US alone that provide private jet management with a range of different services.

For example, my wife’s boss has a Dassault Falcon 2000. He keeps it under management with a company at the nearby executive airport. I also have a few friends who are pilots for the same management company. The management company maintains the aircraft, hires, trains, pays, and schedules pilots, and handles every aspect of a flight. He simply has his assistant call to schedule his trips.

The aircraft is used for a mix of business and personal use. In addition to everything the management company provides for his personally owned airplane, they also have a fleet of other aircraft that he has access to for a significantly reduced fee. This is useful for when some people need to be one place but a team of other people need to travel from the main office to the distribution centers or vendors. When you’re moving 5-6 people for a trip the advantage of being able to complete the trip in a day vs an overnight is pretty significant. By the time you factor in 5-6 airline tickets, lost employee productivity, and hotels for 5-6 people for a night. You come out about even, if not ahead, by using the jet.

Often when they travel they’ll have a flight attendant and catering that provides easily just as good, if not better, service than you’ll get on most domestic business class flights in the US.

In summary, better service, on-demand, and basically no effort other than an e-mail or phone call. I’d say it’s worth it if money means nothing to you.

The big advantages are ease and flexibility.

Ease: there's no TSA security before boarding, so (from a passenger perspective) you just climb in to the plane and take off, similar to hopping into a car.

Flexibility: you don't have to worry about airline schedules. When your meeting is over you just hop into the plane and fly to the next destination.

Especially when traveling to/from non-major airports (where there may only be 1-2 flights/day) or small cities (which may only have a municipal airport) there can be huge time savings from using a private plane.

(Source: I've tagged along when university administrators flew to a Reagents meeting. It was a propeller plane and what would have been a 2-hour drive was a 15-20 minute flight. I'm not a pilot so I don't know how much paperwork was involved nor how much lead time the pilots had before we told them we were ready to leave.)

Flying on a private jet is clearly better than flying first class. You don't have to own the jet though. (Renting time is probably more flexible than owning, but there are peak times where rentals are tight)

It only takes a few minutes to walk from the parking lot through the general aviation terminal and onto the plane, there's no hassle with luggage, and you don't need to wait for the rest of the passengers to get on the plane. You can fly into smaller airports and pick the schedule that works best for you.

What's the target market for these kinds of jets?

Millionaire private pilots, who want to sometimes fly their family and friends? Companies needing to fly an executive around?

I don't quite see the practicality of a jet like this, it seems too small and short range to be economical to use in a business setting. Obviously there is a target market because they're making them, butI don't know what it is.

Same as Ferraris, except wealthier. No one needs a private jet. A turboprop is much more efficient. This is faster though, and there's a certain cachet to being able to say, "We took my jet."

Using a turboprop or a jet (should be) is a result of the specific requirements of a client. If it requires rather short trips on short runways, multiple landings a day and maybe the need to carry some larger items, a turboprop such as the Pilatus PC-12 or a Beech King Air 250 might be a better fit than some private jet. Then again, private jets come in all sorts of variety: if you have rather short runways and short trips, one of the smaller Cessna Citations might be the perfect fit. If you want to travel in comfort across the oceans, an Embraer Legacy or a Gulfstream have no competition from Turboprops at all.

There are different planes for different needs.

Jets are able to fly higher than turboprops avoiding weather which be otherwise dangerous or uncomfortable

Maybe companies with execs who need to fly around.

In high school, the father of a best friend was a VP of Circle K grocery stores. They had stores all over Arizona and New Mexico, many in very out-of-the-way locations.

He was very much a hands-on manager. He got his private pilot's license, his twin engine and IFR ratings so he could fly the company's twin Baron on inspection tours of their stores.

He did this two days/week, knew every one of the couple of hundred store managers by name and what their particular stores needed. No way he could have done that without the plane.

Had a local guy do the same thing with a beautiful twin Baron. Took kids up in it during the county fair. A couple weeks later he forgot to shut a baggage door, tip (?) stalled it on his return and landed upside down. :(

Mostly rich owners who wish to fly themselves. You can fly with one pilot. So if you have your license, you can fly your family and friends. It can also be useful for companies, imagine a band of lawyers/rich consultants/fixers that fly across the country. Some of the twins are already costing upwards of 2million, might as well add a few more and get a jet.

> The speakerless sound system ... the speakers are integrated into the side panels.

So NOT speakerless, then?

I grokked that as no VISIBLE speakers

Same as serverless.

Could be NXT panels.

Which made me wonder, are they also using the sound system for active noise cancellation?

Being a huge fan of Honda since 10 years this also sparked my interest. Do they develope their own jet engine and if so where can i get my hands on one for my CBR1000rr? :)

Added info: 1,437 nm ~ 2,661 km Engine: Twin GE Honda Aero Engines HF120 turbofans

they designed the engine first but since no one chose it, they then decided it build the plane too.

I remember a friend who got the Honda Fireblade CBR919RR in 1997. The bike was amazing and i dreamed of it for close to 2 decades before i had my license. 6 years ago i finally got my first superbike, the 919RR.

Let's see when the prices falls on one of these engines made in 2003, who knows, this might also be one of those belated dreams coming through.

Oh cool. This is good news for a lot of us who have been waiting for such a jet.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic but I genuinely have loved this plane ever since I heard of it.

Primarily excited because I'm a huge fan of Honda, secondarily because the price-point, it is fairly affordable for what it is and I can hope to own one by my 50's when the price comes down a bit.

At $5.25 mil, how far are you hoping they’ll depreciate?

I was sarcastic. There is just nothing in this that's interesting in any way for this site unless I didn't see what makes this jet in any way novel. Otherwise we'll have to start posting all press releases for the latest Porsche, Ferrari or Lamborghini.

Introducing a new plane from a new company in a stagnant market is slightly different than another model from companies already in the car market. But thanks for coming here to tell us all how uninteresting it is for you!

FTA it looks exactly like what you describe, a new model from a company already in the market. Is it disrupting the industry in a way that those of us less versed in the aircraft industry don't see?

Very light jets are somewhat disruptive, having the altitude, speed, range, and reliability benefits of jets with turboprop/piston-engine single pilot capability and costs. There was nothing equivalent in general aviation prior to their arrival. The HondaJet is an innovative leader in this fairly hot space.

There is a potential for air taxi services opened up by these VLJs as well.

Instead of buying a 2.5 million dollar tear down house in Silicon Valley you rent for $800 a month far away and fly in every day.

I'm genuinely asking... what plane can one rent for $800 a month, and that's with payments for ground services aside?

Read again, the housing is $800, the plane is 2.5m.

I think parent meant “rent a living space” far away cheaply, rather than renting a plane.

I know you were joking, but I was curious so I looked it up: the HondaJet can get about 4MPG (though presumably less for short trips), jet fuel currently costs about $2.20 per gallon (not sure if that’s retail or wholesale), and let’s say Stockton to SJC which is about 84 miles (though I’d probably go somewhere up or down the coast, or maybe Tahoe). That’s only 84/4*2.2 = $46 each way, in about 20 minutes.

Plus maintenance, storage, airport fees, pilot if you can’t fly it yourself, probably other stuff I don’t know about. Still, that’s a less fuel than I thought it would be.

And, in at least one revision of the tax bill you would have gotten to write all those maintenance expenses off.

Instead of buying a 5 million dollar house in Silicon Valley you rent for $800 a month far away and fly in every day.

> Otherwise we'll have to start posting all press releases for the latest Porsche, Ferrari or Lamborghini.

Or... Tesla? Or any other car that is technologically novel, typically along some axis of self driving and/or electrical.

Look for the cirrus vision jet, it's about $2million.

Not for me - last week I signed a contract on the now-deprecated HA-420.

One thing that made me giggle is that in the elite they threw a seatbelt in the lavatory, meaning you can legally carry one more passenger now. Who's the lucky person that get's strapped in the shitter?

That's clearly for customers who are carrying captives in their jets.

Uncle bob, who’s a bit “leaky” shall we say

But still want to stay on the good side of the FAA.

"With a range of 1,427 nm..."

Hm...I'm calling shenanigans.

Nautical miles.. it should be capitalized NM.

I was momentarily confused by that too. Fortunately, Mr. Brain figured out what they meant, even before coffee.

Why?

It's a sure sign of a bubble when there's a big swing up in bizjets. :)

"To continue enjoying the free content made available to you on this website, you must indicate that you understand and accept Bonnier Corp.’s use of cookies by selecting the "Allow all cookies" button below."

If you click the "view details" there's a list of over 500 (!) cookies that you must consent to, with hundreds of companies, and not even an opt-out. Blatantly non compliant with GDPR, can't wait for the first warnings and fines to be served on these types of websites.

If the site isn’t offering any paid services to EU citizens how will the EU fine them?

You are seeing it wrong. Many of hose marketing companies are selling to European advertisers. So of course they have paid European customers. I am their product, and what they do with my data is illegal.

How they'll be fined is another matter, of course. But let me say that as a EU citizen, I would not dare violate US law in any mayor way. And they do mention GDPR in their privacy statement (even if they lie about compliance) which is hopeful.

Oh boy. I suspect “This website isn’t GDPR compliant!” will join the ranks of classic Hacker News rant comments like “Piping curl to bash is insecure!“, “Why does this website hijack my scrolling / autoplay videos / use 150% of my CPU?”, etc.

These kinds of small rants play their small part in ensuring that the world stays in equilibrium.

If no one complained, sites would use 800% of the CPU by now, every install procedure would be completely insecure and autoplay would become mandatory. Probably.

Lol they missed some too:

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    Host: kpnsg-fv59w.ads.tremorhub.com
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I find interesting the "classification" of those cookies:

Necessary (31)

Preferences (15)

Statistics (63)

Marketing (356)

Unclassified (145)

Setting aside GDPR and any related privacy concerns, the numbers are IMHO impressive, and probably a good representation of how much on a site is "content" (Necessary+Preferences) and how much is "overlays" (all the rest).

Of course the big question are the "Unclassified" ones, particularly because they are described as "in the process of classifying", I mean, you add stuff to your site before deciding what they are? (it's not like 1 or 2 added recently, it's 145 of them).

I feel like a big part of having a private jet is looking and feeling like a baller and I can’t see how that happens with those corny engine pods sitting way above the wings.

No, a big part of owning a private jet is to be able to go wherever you want whenever you want.

Why not just charter then? Seems like for a $5 million jet, the staffing costs and headaches probably make NetJets much simpler and farther in range.

I don't believe real elites actually use things named elite. That's often something reserved for the more l33t among us.

The Japanese really need to learn how to create better product names.

Tell that to Boom!

But seriously, at the price point for this machine, name, branding is not that relevant. They could call it flying basket and if it delivers on TCO, people who use these things will buy them.

Maybe whoever worked in the Commodore marketing department sold really expensive things in a past job then?

http://bash.org/?3763

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