The jet set: Honda builds a little jet that could have a big impact on business aviation--and a growing Triad industry.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Cover Story

As the chilly day dawns, the attention of aviation enthusiasts around the world is riveted on North Carolina's Outer Banks, where builders of a replica of the Wright brothers' 1903 airplane race to repair crash damage before the centennial celebration two weeks later. Two-thirds of the way across the state in Greensboro, a light wind brushes Piedmont Triad International Airport Runway 5/23 from the east--the direction of Kill Devil Hills.

Inside a metal hangar, engineers and technicians twitter around a small, blue-and-white jet. Like the Wrights, they came here looking for a spot away from prying eyes. As many as 50 have worked here three years almost unnoticed, and few outside their circle know that the airplane exists. Their design is novel, from a nose that resembles a hummingbird's bill to newly developed jet engines perched like crabs' eyes on stalks atop wings with upturned tips.

The hour arrives. Two test pilots buckle into their seats and check instruments. Don Godwin, a 57-year-old Greensboro aviator who soloed at 16, slides into the pilot's seat of the Cessna Citation II chase plane. It will film the flight for clues as to how the experimental jet performs--or to document what went wrong. The two planes begin rolling.

At the end of the runway, the tiny jet awaits clearance from the control tower, then surges forward. At 110 knots--about 130 mph--the pilot lifts its nose, and its wheels leave the ground for the first time. It is 11 a.m. Dec. 3, 2003. At the hangar, hushed conversations erupt into cheers. "Everybody," says one who watched the takeoff, "started celebrating." Reaction is more subdued 6,800 miles away. It is 1 o'clock in the morning in Tokyo.

The 40-minute maiden flight of Honda Motor Company Ltd.'s secret airplane--officially, HondaJet--was flawless but hardly an overnight success. Behind its rollout from a hangar at Atlantic Aero Inc., which services, repairs and modifies airplanes, lay nearly 20 years of research and development. Honda will say little about the airplane's past or future, but its genesis can be cobbled together from unofficial accounts, flight records and other sources. Some experts estimate the company has invested $300 million in the project, including the plane's high-thrust, high-efficiency engines, which could do for compact jets what Honda's fuel-efficient engines did for compact cars in the 1970s.

Analysts say that the plane could revolutionize flying for businesses and the budding air-taxi industry, in which small, fast and economical jets bypass the delays and frustrations of major airline hubs. The pricing target: jets that can operate profitably at fares comparable to first-class airline tickets--$2 a mile or less. Such planes, loaded with global-positioning devices and computerized landing, take-off and navigation systems, might one day fly themselves. Selling for $1 million to $2 million--a quarter the cost of today's entry-level business jets--they could bring affordable jet aviation within reach of thousands more companies and individuals. The potential of the market is such that at least three other manufacturers are interested in developing microjets.

Honda's goal, a consultant on the project says, is a plane that will cost 40% less to operate than existing business jets. But with the nonchalance of a multinational conglomerate that rang up $67 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ended in March, the company pooh-poohs the airplane's significance. "It's purely experimental," says Jeffrey Smith, a spokesman in Honda R&D Americas Inc.'s Torrance, Calif., headquarters. "We have no plans to take it to market."

Others, including some atop Honda's hierarchy, are sending a different message. One of them is Takeo Fukui, president and CEO of the parent company. He recently announced that Honda will team with Fairfield, Conn.-based General Electric Co. to manufacture the mighty-mite HF118 engines Honda created for the Greensboro plane, regardless of HondaJet's fate. "Aviation," he says, "has been a dream of our company since its creation." Honda also plans to develop and sell piston airplane engines. Archrival Toyota Motor Co. has secretly test-flown a four-passenger propeller plane.

Fukui's dream has others dreaming, too. The N.C. Department of Commerce has secretly courted Honda aviation since stumbling onto its Triad presence. Commerce won't comment, but...