The Hindu : Honda takes to the air

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 23, 2004

Business

Business

Honda takes to the air

LAST WEEK's announcement that Honda and General Electric are to form a joint venture to develop and certify a new range of small jet engines in the 1,000 to 3,500 pound thrust class created a stir in some business circles, but it is not sudden for Honda has dreamt of aviation from its very beginnings and has been actively researching small jet transport aircraft since 1986. Much of Honda's work in this area was carried out at Honda R&D America by joint Japanese-American engineering teams.

Design of the HF 118 turbofan engine, with a take off thrust of 1,670 pounds, is said to have begun in 1999 and it had already accumulated over 1,400 hours of rigorous testing on the ground and 110 flying hours on a Cessna Citation before a pair powered the new small business jet on its first flight.

Interestingly the new aircraft took to the air early last December, almost exactly one hundred years after the Wright brothers first flew `The Flyer' and only a few hundred kilometres away from the Wrights' legendary site at Kill Devil Hills in the U.S. state of North Carolina.

The HondaJet is said to have completed initial flight tests successfully demonstrating its all-composite fuselage and integrally stiffened, and machined, aluminium alloy wing. The very smooth surfaced wing is said to maximise laminar (non-turbulent) airflow in spite of its relative thickness, thereby reducing fuel consuming `drag' even at high cruising speeds. The jet is scheduled to undertake about another 200 hours of flight-testing to demonstrate the operability and performance of its various systems.

A 40 per cent improvement in fuel consumption compared to its competitors is fantastic because the usual jumps are rarely even a tenth of that. Honda's engineering and manufacturing excellence makes this claim believable because it has in the past turned accepted wisdom on its head, for example, with its CVCC technology or the millions of complex VTECs that have never failed in normal use. The CVCC engine driving the original Civic really made Honda's name because it so easily met contemporary Californian air pollution standards without needing the then expensive and unreliable catalytic converters, contrary to loud assertions from the rest of the automobile industry.

The HF 118 engine is said to be responsible for most of the new aircraft's improved operating economy in spite of its straightforward design with a single stage fan, a two-stage compressor, a two-stage turbine and a relatively low 2.9 bypass ratio. If all this sounds like Greek and Latin, no matter. The point is that Honda has been able to design and manufacture a light, simple and reliable engine so impressive in performance that the world's largest aero engine manufacturer, General Electric, has chosen to tie up with it rather than trust to its own devices. It is interesting that GE's great long-term competitor, Pratt and Whitney, has also come out with a new range of engines in more or less the same thrust class through its Canadian subsidiary, PWC.

The new engines are positioned in a unique configuration above the HondaJet's wings that minimises drag and improves cruise efficiency. The new layout also eliminates the need for structural engine mounts within the fuselage thereby increasing cabin space by about 30 per cent when compared to conventional business jets in this class. Even the nose of the composite fuselage plays its part by inducing laminar airflow.

After word

A leading Japanese newspaper's report, three days after the Honda-GE announcement on Monday, that Honda was also planning a joint venture with Teledyne for piston (rather than jet) aero engines makes for more interesting news.

If all this appears unimportant from an Indian perspective — even Honda estimates that the world wide annual demand for business jets is only about two hundred — it has other implications for aviation in India. One is that we should explore the viability of joint ventures to exploit our undoubted engineering talents rather than persisting with a "completely indigenous at any cost'' attitude. George Bollin of General Electric, who is in charge of military aero engine development at the company, forcefully drove this home last year. In an exclusive interview with this columnist, he said that GE would like to collaborate with India on engines for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). That he did not show the same enthusiasm for the Kaveri engine tells another story.

C. Manmohan Reddy

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