Gallery: Inside the Factory Building the World's Smallest, Cheapest Private Jet
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The Vision Jet is built for regional transportation, so business travelers can visit multiple cities in a day, or get away with friends and family without dealing with commercial airlines.
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The unconventional, striking rear tail assembly, called a ruddervator or v-tail, replaces the traditional vertical and horizontal stabilizer that would contain the rudder and elevator, respectively. Instead, the Vision features angled strakes that are controlled by the pilot, along with two computer-controlled strakes beneath the “v.” The v-shape allows Cirrus to stick the engine atop the fuselage, reducing noise in the cabin and on the ground, and making for easier access for inspection.
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Most of the Vision Jet’s individual parts are manufactured in this Grand Forks, North Dakota, center, and then trucked to the Cirrus Design headquarters in Duluth, Minnesota, for assembly. Here, wing molds sit ready for layers of carbon fiber to be laid down. To help the humans, overhead lasers project patterns onto the mold for them to follow.
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The cabin is a made from a single chunk of carbon fiber, rather than multiple pieces joined together. Here, a worker lays down sheets of the material to form the piece inside a steel mold. The carbon fiber comes impregnated with resin that fuses the layers together when heated. Workers use a handheld heat gun to warm the material enough for initial placement, the pop the whole piece in an autoclave to bake into the final structure.
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Other carbon fiber structural components are formed in molds and then baked in groups in this oven, with airtight vacuum bags helping achieve the same results as a high-pressure autoclave, but at a fraction of the cost.
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The carbon fiber components attach to these metal supports—each one custom designed for the specific part—and then placed in a CNC milling machine to be trimmed, cut, and drilled as necessary.
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As the parts are completed, they head to Duluth for assembly. Here, the fuselages—which have had their surfaces prepped for eventual painting—begin to be fitted with hardware. Because the airplane is made entirely out of high-strength carbon fiber, the Vision Jet has some of the largest windows ever available in a pressurized aircraft cabin. At this stage, the fuselages are still lightweight enough that they can still be lifted and moved by just two workers.
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Internal linkages connect the ruddervator to the control sticks in the cockpit, while the lower assembly linkages are connected to computer-controlled servos.
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Cirrus expects to eventually produce 125 of the jets per year. Most will be sold to existing customers upgrading from piston-engine aircraft, so Cirrus not only will offer factory-direct purchase options, but also training and certification programs for new jet pilots. (It’ll do most of that at its new customer service center in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the weather is more conducive to year-round operation.)
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Midway through the assembly process, the jets are primed and painted, along with other Cirrus aircraft assembled elsewhere in the factory.
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Once the planes are back in the assembly line, crews install avionics, radar, instrument panels. Final interiors go in after the airplanes have gone through test flights to ensure everything functions properly.
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The Cirrus Airframe Parachute System includes this 150-pound parachute, fabricated and packed in-house. In an emergency, the pilot or passengers can pull a lever inside the cockpit. If the jet is flying at a high speed, it will automatically pitch upward to slow down before deploying the parachute. An airbag beneath the chute detonates to push it out of the nose, then a rocket fires to pull the parachute clear of the aircraft. Straps embedded in the carbon fiber structure peel away to level the airplane, and it then descends to the ground at approximately 25 feet per second. The Vision is the first jet aircraft to include an airframe parachute, which Cirrus has used in its other piston airplanes since the late 1990s. Cirrus estimates the system has saved more than 120 lives.
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The airplane’s single Williams International FJ33-5A turbofan jet engine, shown here as it arrives from the Williams factory, produces up to 1,800 pounds of thrust. It has an automatic digital control unit that allows pilots to turn it on with the push of a single button. The computer then monitors its operation—speed, key temperatures, and so on—and signals when all systems are go.
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The FJ33’s efficiency contributes to the jet’s low operating cost of just $600 per hour, in a field where most small jets cost thousands of dollars for each hour of flight, including maintenance and upkeep. Having a single engine reduces fuel consumption and speeds inspections. Though dual engines are usually favored for their redundancy, failures in jet engines are exceedingly rare, and the airplane has a 14:1 glide ratio—up to 75 miles—so it can usually reach an airport in an emergency. Plus, the whole parachute thing.
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Garmin supplies an avionics system simplified for non-professional pilots. The customizable dual displays automatically prioritize information based on the phases of flight or the pilot’s preferences. The system also features synthetic vision, in which detailed terrain and airport replications appear on the screen, to help keep the pilot oriented in low-visibility flight.
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Whereas most business jets fly very businesslike profiles—steep climb, straight line at high speed, steep descent—Cirrus wants the Vision Jet to be as enjoyable to fly as it is efficient. It can be safely flown at lower speeds than most jets, enabling more leisurely recreational outings at lower altitudes. It’s also got plenty of what pilots call “ramp appeal.” That is, it’s pretty much just as fun to look at as it is to fly in.
