People
Lifting People Up: Every Time Alex DaRosa Straps Into the Cockpit, He’s Living GE Aerospace’s Purpose
About five years ago, Alex DaRosa was watching a colleague deliver a presentation to the Pilot Advocacy Group at GE Aerospace when he had one of those life-altering “aha” moments. The speaker was Walt Moeller, who works in flight operations, writing engine manuals for pilots. But for many years, Moeller’s main job was flying commercial passenger jets. “He basically came in and talked about his time being a captain for Comair and how that was his favorite job of his entire life,” DaRosa recalls.
Business jets
Flying High: The Eye-Catching HondaJet Lures Fans Both Famous And Practical
It's a Car, It’s Plane, It’s a HondaJet: A Close Look at Honda’s First Business Jet
Friends in High Places: HondaJet’s New Engines to Power Legacy Cessna Business Jets
GE engineers helped inventor and aircraft designer Bill Lear create the business jet market in the 1960s, when they converted a fighter jet engine into propulsion for the first Learjet. But the company has been largely absent from the space since.
Bill Lear’s Learjet used GE’s J85 jet engines originally developed for Northrop F-5 fighter jets. Image credit: National Museum of USAF
The First Production HondaJet Completes Maiden Flight
The first production HondaJet business jet took off from an airstrip at Honda Aircraft’s global headquarters in Greensboro, NC, last Friday. The flight was part of FAA certification and the company expects the aircraft will enter service in 2015.
The maiden voyage also marked GE’s return to the executive jet business, a market the company helped create in the 1960s when engineers converted the J85 military jet engine into propulsion for the first Learjet.
The HondaJet Just Got New Engines. Is the Flying Car Next?
The engine is now in full production at GE Aviation’s plant in Lynn, Mass, according to Terry Sharp, the joint-venture’s president. Sharp said that “significant planning activity” was underway to move manufacturing to a new Honda Aero factory in Burlington, N.C., before the end of the year.