An article at GreenMuze.com discusses a pretty interesting sounding aircraft: the SmartFish. the blended wing design immediately suggests a quest for greater efficiency. The capabilities they're boasting their plane is capable of are pretty amazing. The SmartFish website says the technology could be applied from anything to small UAVs to business jets to midsize business jets.

So, is this one of those eternally under development concepts or a potential leap in aircraft design?

I was pretty optimistic when the concept of the Very Light Jet was born. There were several neat designs and costs promised to be impressively low. Since then though, several start-up VLJ companies failed and many other projects are stalled or just creeping along. The VLJ hype has all but disappeared. How then has Cessna reached the impressive milestone of rolling out its 300th Citation Mustang?

AvWeb recently wrote that Eclipse Aerospace has been busy and is making some significant progress in their recovery efforts. This is confirmed by a communique from Eclipse and an article in the New Mexico Business Weekly.

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!

Garmin's announcement about their G3000 marked another big step for GA avionics. I've been wondering who the initial customers would be and I just found out. It turns out that Piper's VLJ - the PiperJet - is the first to announce they'll have the G3000.

An EAA newsletter just pointed me to an article about the new Eclipse Aerospace. A group of aircraft owners banded together and purchased the bankrupt company for a mere $40 million.

Stratos Aircraft has never quite seemed to fit in the VLJ market. They arrived late, amidst turmoil of companies like Adam Aircraft and Eclipse going under and they boast goals much more ambitious than many companies: fly 4 people 1500 nm at 400 knots...with a single engine.

I got to talk to a Stratos engineer at Airventure and he explained some of the company's strategy and reasoning. After talking to him, I'm pretty optimistic for their company.

In spite of tough times, several VLJ companies are still going strong. One of those, Stratos Aircraft, is bringing a full-scale cabin mock-up to Oshkosh and hoping for some constructive feedback from potential customers.