Very Light Jets

Some of the brightest entrepreneurial minds on the planet have converged to bring us a new way to get there.


These guys promise exciting new options on the terminal horizon of our future commercial air travel vacations and business trips! The hub-and-spoke system of air travel has become outdated. Flying through Atlanta to get to anywhere on the planet is routine.


National Business Aircraft Association (NBAA) Fact Book 2004 reports that 30 out of the 550 commercial airports in the U.S. account for 70% of all of our air travel. Our skies are crowded around many major airports and the air traffic control system is rapidly approaching capacity. NBAA also reports that there are 5300 available satellite airports in the U.S. Many of these underused airports could be used by small jets to relieve this situation. "Very Light Jet" air transport technology is on track to make this a reality.


Very Light Jets are identified by other names including VLJs, Microjets, and Personal Jets. Their manufacturers are scheduled to begin deliveries worldwide within the next twelve months. With manufacturers reporting advance sales of thousands of these new planes, their customers are comprised of owner/ pilots, air-taxi fleet and charter operaters, private owners, and fractional providers.


Very light jets are considered to be a new category of plane because of their smaller cabin size compared to other business jets and they weigh less than 10,000 lbs. They are also powered by a group of newly developed and smaller jet engines.


Many groups are planning to compete for a piece of this new way to travel. These entrepreneurial efforts include a team headed by Donald C. Burr, founder in 1980 of the former airline, People Express. On March 29 Burr, his son Cameron, and associates made a Securities and Exchange Commission filing for their Very Light Jet Company, POGO.
Burr says "our intent here is to bring the private-travel market down from CEO level to manager-level people." The reported pricing plan of POGO is to provide a $3 to $4 a mile travel experience. This fare structure compares to retail first-class on most flights.


The commoditization of these Very Light Jet air-taxi seats will make this travel option available to progressively larger segments of air travelers.
The aircraft at the heart of this breakthrough technology will have one or two engines, glass cockpits, and seats for four to nine passengers. Their range will be over 1000 miles and they will fly at a speed of 340 to 380 knots and up to FL410. The turbofans that power these rockets produce 700 to 1700 pounds of thrust and weigh 200 to 300 pounds!
The VLJs will be certified and equipped to fly with a single pilot but most of the planes will likely be flown with a crew of two.


NASA's General Aviation Propulsion Program (GAP) ran from 1996 until 2002 on a mission to deliver a selection of vastly improved performance-to-price ratio General Aviation engines.


NASA and Williams International participated in the turbine portion of the GAP cooperative agreement and developed the FJX-2 turbofan. This prototype engine weighed 85 pounds and ultimately produced over 700 pounds of thrust with a thrust-to weight ratio over 8.2, the highest in commercial turbofan history!


The FJX-2 program inspired the development of the GE/ Honda HF118, Pratt & Whitney Canada PW615F, and Williams International FJ33, which are the production engines for the Very Light Jets. There are also many military applications for these new engines beyond their use in commercial aviation.


The aircraft are in various stages of manufacture and certification. Adam Aircraft Industries, Avocet, Aviation Technology Group, Cessna, Diamond Aircraft, Eclipse, Embraer, Epic, Eviation, Excel-Jet, Honda-Jet, Maverick, Scion, Spectrum, and others are at the starting line. Which manufacturers will win the high-stakes race?


What about our future vacations and business travel? Will we be comfortable in these small Very light jets? Will our kids miss running up and down the aisles and harassing the flight attendants? Will our spouses complain about the size of the bathrooms- and will we miss those hours spent at the Atlanta Hartsfield airport?
Stay tuned!

Top Tips

I’m about to share with you the common thread that ties together all successful entrepreneurs. This single trait launched the businesses of Microsoft, Intel, Hershey, JP Morgan, Amazon.com, Nike and so many others. It’s not anything you’ll be taught in Business School, it has nothing to do with accounting, and it doesn’t even have anything to do with what you’re selling or how you’re selling it. I’ll sum it up in two words:


GET STARTED!
That’s it! It’s laughable at first, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. It’s the missing “million dollar” idea, hiding in plain sight. We hear variations of this all the time: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.


Think back to your first writing classes in school. How were we taught to write a paper? First we start with a basic outline – that’s our money-making idea, whatever it may be. Next, we make a rough draft – that’s right, we start working on something that we know for a fact will be imperfect. Finally, we use our rough-draft as a basis to begin revisions, eventually ending up with a final draft, the “perfect” version.


Planning for tomorrow is a sound business strategy. It’s good to spend time thinking about the future, and how to handle the challenges it will bring. But, if we want to succeed, we must create the future by taking action today. We can’t possibly predict everything that might happen once we start doing business. Microsoft started out selling programming software. After a few years, an opportunity presented itself to sell a computer Operating System to IBM, and they took it. The result was MS-DOS (which they didn’t even create themselves, they bought it from someone else when they saw how much money they could make!), followed by Windows; quite possibly one of the most lucrative products ever. If Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft, had sat on the sidelines of the growing computer industry thinking “programming software is an OK idea, but it’s not perfect, there really isn’t a big enough market for it…we need something better”, would they be where they are today? Would IBM have given them that golden opportunity? Not likely.


Did Michelangelo's sculpture of David emerge from a single tap of a chisel upon a block of marble? No, it took Michelangelo over 3 years of effort to release his masterpiece from the stone, one tiny chip of marble at a time. It probably wasn’t very pretty after only 1 month, or even a year. But years of careful improvement resulted in a classic work of art.
I hope I’ve made my point. Do something. Do anything! If you do something, and the result isn’t what you wanted, what’s the worst that could happen? You either have something to improve upon, or you have a very good idea of an approach that doesn’t work (think of it as addition by subtraction…the process of elimination). Either way, you’re one step closer to success than you were before you started.


Go for it! Give it a shot! Your financial success is waiting for you, go and get it! Get Started Today!


Good Luck!

Business Plan Tips

It's amazing how much misinformation there is about business plans. One of the biggest questions people have is about how long and detailed business plans should be. Should they be like big thick books, or are these things generally pretty brief?


Truth is, it depends.
It depends on how big the company is and how complicated it is. A business plan of a start up business making no money -- for example -- is going to be bigger than the ones that are running and making money already. What you have to do is spell out -- in enough detail -- all the necessary information on the financials, the industry, the company, and especially the management to satisfy whoever you're trying to persuade to finance it.
The management part is especially important if you plan to get investor financing.


Why?
Because people putting up money are going to want to know not only how long they’ve been there and what their history with that company is...but they'll also want to know what their full background is. And the more you spell out, the better.
Bottom line: People tend to make business plans more complicated than they are, and there are things you need to know, but it's not rocket science. Just remember, if you’re buying a $10 million business, you’d better make sure your business plan looks like a $10 million business plan. If you're buying a $50,000 business then it only needs to look like a $50,000 business plan.


If you need help, simply hire someone to help you -- just like you'd hire a CPA or lawyer. Find somebody that does a professional job and it’s worth it. If you're strapped for cash, but have done your homework and know you have a good thing, there are books and software at most libraries that can help you.


Arthur B. Hamel has bought over 200 businesses in the past 50 years, and is a well-known author, consultant, investor, business owner, and dynamic lecturer who has shared the stage with such business greats as Robert Allen of "No Money Down" fame. For the past 20 years Art has taught thousands of people around the world -- even so-called "little guys" with no formal education or money -- how to quickly and easily buy large, multi-million dollar businesses with no credit, banks or prior business experience. He has recently decided to share his unique business-buying secrets and tactics free of charge at: http://arthurhamel.co