Blue - Sky Thinking

You’ve ridden the company’s motorcycles and driven its cars. Now, writes JON WALL, prepare for take-off in Honda’s very first aeroplane

- Jon Wall

IT WAS ALMOST exactly 20 years ago that Michimasa Fujino, a young engineer with a doctorate in aeronautics who at the time was working for the Honda Motor Company, first sketched his idea for an advanced lightweight private jet. His concept was unusual in that it proposed mounting the plane’s two engines not at each side of the rear fuselage – as is standard practice for business jets – but on pylons above the wings.

Fujino’s logic was that the wing mounted turbofans would not only drastically cut interior noise and vibration, but also maximise cabin space in a small aircraft designed to carry seven people at most (which would include two pilots). The prevailing wisdom, on the other hand, was that overwing engines would have a tendency to tip over and thus be inherently unstable, and that they and their pylons would negatively affect airflow over the wings’ aerodynamically sensitive upper surfaces.

Fast forward to 2017 and the gorgeous redand-white aeroplane parked in a hangar at Hong Kong International Airport’s Business Aviation Centre serves as convincing proof of the soundness of Fujino’s original concept. Indeed, as the still-youthful engineer and businessman – who, in his capacity as president and CEO of the Honda Aircraft Company, now stands with us as we admire the first production Hondajet to land in this city – modestly but neatly puts it: “We found the sweet spot.”