MS760 Parris Jet: Rebirth of the Original VLJ
Jason — Sun, 11/01/2009 - 00:50
Very Light Jets have gotten a lot of hype in the last few years. Several VLJ startup companies have failed and a few VLJs are starting to hit the market. The current market formed after the release of a new class of small turbofan engines. However, we can hardly say that the VLJ is a new class of aircraft. Depending on who you ask, the first VLJ was built in 1954 and flew as a liaison aircraft for the French military and as a personal jet. That aircraft, the Morane-Saulnier MS760 Parris Jet has been flying ever since. Now, according to Marketwatch.com, a Canadian pilot-entrepreneur named Edward Furtak has formed JetSet International Ltd. and purchased the aircraft's type certificate and associated rights from SOCATA. He is re-releasing the MS760 into the current VLJ market and plans some significant upgrades to the design.
Can you believe that a brand-new VLJ company already has flying aircraft for sale? Imagine owning this proven, high-performance VLJ for only $550,000. Imagine what a 4-seat jet like that will do the to VLJ market!
The MS760 has a nice website with a lot of interesting history and information about future plans. They currently have 8 aircraft for sale and another 20 or so ready for refurbishment. They offer several different avionics packages, any of which would make this plane a great IFR cross-country machine. (It cruises at up to 400 knots and has a 1000 nm range.)
They are looking at upgrading to a turbofan engine and have numbers showing a significant improvement in every area of performance with that engine. They're looking at a 6-place cabin class version of the plane too. A prototype of it flew years ago, but was never put into production. 93% of the parts for the 6-place version are common to the current 4-place one. That should make the development and certification of the larger jet a reasonably easy process.
JetSet has also formed an aerobatic airshow team that will fly a pair of ParrisJets in formation. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing them. It should be a pretty effective way to advertise their aircraft.
If you're interested in owning one of these VLJs today, you can expect a pretty good deal. JetSet has an insurance agreement in place with AIG and they are offering a free annual the first year and discounted fuel for a year. Transition training will be conducted by retired Navy Captain Dale “Snort” Snodgrass from their airshow team.
I'm excited to see this aircraft reintroduced to the VLJ market. Even on its old turbojet engines, it has performance numbers that challenge any other VLJ out there. When they upgrade to a turbofan it will only get better. The best part is that this is already a certified, ready to fly aircraft. People can buy these jets today rather than waiting several more years for many other VLJs to complete development.
Probably the best part is the price. For 25% more than a brand new Cirrus SR-22 (or 10% less than a Cessna 400) you can buy a 400 knot twin jet. Not even the Diamond D-Jet or the Cirrus SJ-50 will be able to compete with that price...when they finally enter production. Edward Furtak is a gutsy guy, but also a smart businessman. I think he'll be very pleased that he decided to buy the rights to the MS760. Congratulations to the JetSet team. I look forward hearing a lot more about your jets in the future.
- 1382 reads
-
WIthout new engines the Paris
Unidentified Target — Wed, 02/10/2010 - 21:00WIthout new engines the Paris Jet is a dinosaur. The engines on the original Paris jet sucked Jet A at a rate more like a 10 seat mid size jet than a VLJ. I flew the Cessna T-37 with those same engines back in my USAF days and I can tell you they are better at converting fuel to noise than to thrust. The T-37 was very similar in size to the Paris and carried about 2000 lbs of fuel, which we burned in about 1.5 hours. Of course you can strech the fuel longer by flying very high and slow, but in a Paris jet it will take you a very long time to get to altitude. In addition with the new RVSM rules you almost certainly cannot fly a paris above FL280. Ressurecting a 50 year old airframe, even with new engines, is hardly aviation progress. What we need is for the FAA to provide a path for new aircraft to be certified quickly and cheaply so that the manufacturers don't have to pass along millions of dollars of certification costs to the end user. I believe that Sino Swearingen took about a decade to certify the SJ30. The cost of certification essentially bankrupted the company and jacked the price of the airplane by millions of dollars. Similar issues almost killed the Eclipse jet and did kill the Adam.
I certainly care about safety but at some point one has to be willing to accept some risk in order to allow progress. If Cessna, Piper and Beech had had the same beurocracy to contend with in the 50s and 60s we probably would have never had a general aviation industry in the US.
Post new comment