Eclipse Aviation is committed to becoming, in the words of its founder, president and CEO, Vern Raburn, “The Ford Motor Company of business aviation.” To that end, it plans to attain an annual production capacity of 1,500 Eclipse 500 very light jets by 2009, using advances in production technology reminiscent of the mass-production assembly line and interchangeable parts innovations with which Henry Ford revolutionized the automobile industry in the early 1900s.
Symbolic of that commitment is the presence on Eclipse’s five-member board of directors of retired Ford Motor chairman and CEO Harold Poling. More tangible evidence was formally unveiled on March 10 in Albuquerque at a ceremony dedicating Eclipse Aviation’s 50,000-sq-ft friction-stir welding (FSW) facility. It is this process, Raburn told a gathering of local, New Mexico and business officials, that will be a major factor in achieving such World War II-like aircraft production rates by the end of this decade.
