The FINANCIAL — Elite – a 7 seat business jet, produced by Georgian Airline building company Tbilaviamsheni in joint cooperation with American company Epic, will be certified by a Russian program as planned.
“Today everything is going according to plan and we hope the Russian-Georgian conflict will not affect Russian certification of the business jet,” David Menabde, Business Development Director of Tbiaviamsheni (TAM), told The FINANCIAL.
According to Epic Aircraft CEO Rick Schrameck, Russian forces bombed the runways at TAM's facilities over the weekend, imprisoning the prototype in a hangar at the airfield, AINonline reports.
"Never in my wildest dreams would I ever expect this to happen," he told AIN. "The Elite Jet is OK, but it's stuck at the field.
“And even if we could fly it out of Georgia right now, I'm afraid that it would make for really good target practice for the Russians,” told Schrameck to AIN last week news on Elite’s being at Tbilisi Airport is not true, TAM officials told FINANCIAL.
“After presentation of jet on June, Elite had not landed at Tbilisi Airport,” Nona Tordia, Chairman of the Supervisory Board told FINANCIAL.
“It’s been two years already since Russia put an embargo on economic negotiations with Georgia, but we had not had any problems in arranging for TAM jet certification. We hope this process will continue in the case of Elite,” he added.
According to Menabde, they are now looking at further event development and will act according to necessity.
As Pantiko Tordia, Head of the Supervisory board of Tbilaviamsheni, noted, Russian certification is cheaper than American, which costs USD 70 million.
As Pantiko Tordia told The FINANCIAL earlier, after certification the Russian company intends to buy 600-700 business jets – Elites. Menabde declared that this company is still interested in buying the jets, but it’s very hard to say now whether they will do it or not.
“In parallel we plan to start preparing operations for European certification,” said Menabde.
As Menabde said, they are working on technical improvement of the jet; there are also operations in process for the serial production of Elite.
The cost of one 7 seat business jet Elite is USD 2.8 million.
According to Menabde, the Russian-Georgian war had not affected negotiations between Epic Aicraft and TAM and all mutual plans are still in process.
But as Menabde says, Tbilaviamsheni has suffered serious financial loss, rather than material, since the conflict.
“What’s more, developing projects in military and civil production might be questioned. Our partners are still observing event development,” said Menabde.
Tbilaviamsheni and Epic Aircraft invested USD 10 million in building Elite.
“High quality and the potential of the new market was our motivation to start this project with Tbiaviamsheni. It’s very important when doing business to know who the right partner is, someone who knows the region and can do quality work,” Rick Schrameck, CEO of Epic told The FINANCIAL earlier.
“Elite was projected by Georgian engineers and is composed of non-standard material, no used metal was included. There are only 5 companies in the whole world that produce jets without used metal and one of these rare producers is Tbiaviamsheni,” Tordia said.
The flight length of Elite is 2,700 kilometres and speed – 650-770 k/h.
At the presentation of Elite, Tordia said that if they receive demand Tbiaviamsheni can build a jet in 3 months.
“We produce 250 military planes a year. And if there is need of 500 private jets we can build them. If we manage to sell 100-150 jets a year, it will be very good business for us,” he added.
According to Schrameck, 90% of the world market for jets was to the United States 5 years ago. The global market now includes Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Asia and China which constitute 50% of the market, so it’s become much more diversified.
“After several years the market potential outside of the United States will be approximately USD 500 million. So I think it will be a very profitable business,” Schrameck said to The FINANCIAL before the war started.
Epic Aircraft is a general aviation aircraft manufacturer in Bend, Oregon. They currently offer one certified model, and four experimental models.
Written by Lika Kharebadze.
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