With all the economic turmoil of the last year, the aviation industry has taken its share of hits, but in this hardscrabble business, when the going gets tough, the tough barely notice. That’s not to say that CEOs don’t regret all the layoffs, the capital crunch, the stalled and canceled plans for new jets. But anyone who’s been around the business more than a decade or so has seen it all before. “Aviation is a cyclical business,” is the mantra we’ve been hearing, and even amid the challenges of each day, plans are laid for the inevitable upswing to come.
One of those companies looking to a brighter future is the newly formed Aerion Corp., which is moving forward with plans to build a supersonic business jet. At Mach 1.6, the jet could hop from New York to Paris in just more than four hours. You might think such a dreamy concept wouldn’t attract much support in today’s bottom-line economy, but the company says it has more than 50 orders for the $80 million jet, a $4 billion backlog. If all goes well, the first certified copy will launch in 2015, and, we’ll be out of this down cycle by then and ready for a leap forward. (775.337.6682,
www.aerioncorp.com)
—Mary Grady
Mary learned to fly in a Cessna 172 20 years ago and has been an aviation reporter for 10 years.
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