I just ran across a Seattle PI blog entry by James Wallace that was not at all kind to Vern Raburn or his work in creating the Eclipse 500 and market for Very Light Jets. Looking through Mr. Wallace's other work, I can tell that he keeps up on aviation pretty well. All the same, I wonder if he and some of the people he qotes are a little too energetic in their trashing of Raburn.

Wallace seems to feel that a production rate of 250 aircraft per year is an unacceptably low rate for Eclipse to reach for 2008. Granted, Eclipse made it known that their goals were to produce jets more quickly, but what about the fact that this is a brand new type of aircraft in an emerging market or the fact that they do have over 2000 orders?

By comparison, a recent Aviation Week article portrays Cessna as very excited about producing 440-470 jets per year. Granted, most of those are larger and more complex than the Eclipse 500, but Cessna has been in the industry for decades. Even Cirrus took a few years to get their production levels high enough to lead the piston single market...right? It seems like Cirrus took a solid design, introduced it where there was a market and now they are doing amazing. I think Eclipse is in a similar position and that it's unfairly early to pass judgement on a slower than ideal start.

That's just what I think though. What do you say? Are James Wallace and friends right on. Is Raburn a criminal who might ruin aviation development as we know it, or is he the victim of impatient people who will find themselves in charge of a booming company in a couple years?