One Aviation confident of Eclipse 550 European certification soon

One Aviation is hoping to secure European certification for its Eclipse 550 before the end of the month, paving the way for deliveries of the very light jet to be delivered to the continent. Speaking at NBAA , Ken Ross, One Aviation’s chief financial officer, said: We were hoping to get validation from the European Aviation Safety Administration during the show, but that has been delayed by a few days. It should be awarded any day now.”

Europe is currently home to around 20 Eclipse 500s – the previous incarnation of the VLJ which was certificated by EASA in 2009. “We have made a number of changes to the aircraft since then,” says Ross. “So the certification needs to be updated.”

The upgraded aircraft – introduced in 2013 as the EA550 and already approved by the Federal Aviation Administration - features a dual Avio integrated flight management system, synthetic vision, enhanced vision, auto-throttles and anti-skid brakes.

Albuquerque, New Mexico based One Aviation has two distributors for the €2.3 million ($3 million) twinjet on the continent. Guernsey-headquartered Aeris Aviation, in which Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickenson is a shareholder, and Schonhagen, Germany based JetLounge. The company also has four service centres throughout the region. “We plan to expand both our distributor and service centre network to grow the fleet,” says Ross.

“While we have been able to deliver the EA550 to private owners until now and place the aircraft on a non-European register, we can’t do that for European commercial operators,” Ross says. “We expect this sector to account for fair share of the fleet eventually,”