The first flight of Farnborough-Aircraft.com’s F1 has been delayed by at least 12 months, which spokesman Melvyn Hiscock claims is due to the company attempting to double in size, rather than a lack of investment. This comes at a time when competitor Eclipse has just received an order for 1,000 Eclipse 500s, which is believed to be the single largest business aircraft order ever placed.

Ceo Richard Noble confirmed: “A new investor has offered sufficient funds to fund the company for a year, with additional partners.” This eleviates the pressure somewhat from the company, which has in recent months come within days of failure, according to Noble.

“We are at the point that we need to boost finances, basically the company needs to double in size within the next six months to get the engineering done,” explained Hiscock. According to the company, the recent tragic events may have decentralised the market although it believes that changes were inevitable and have merely been accelerated. Hiscock added: “This market is so huge that we may have initially underestimated it. There is the potential for 19,000 aircraft sales around the world, so we weren’t disappointed by the Eclipse sales, they have merely taken orders from a previously untapped market.”

Farnborough-Aircraft.com said it enjoyed an encouraging response at this year’s Oshkosh fly-in. The F1 will apparently offer travel at four dollars per mile and accessibility to 97 per cent of runways, offering a great deal more flexibility than a straight business jet.

Noble has already made an interesting study of potential for the F1 for the west country of the UK, which “concentrated on domestic internal travel, competing the F1 against rail, airline and car.” At four dollars per mile the F1 will also be competing with airline business classes, creating a more accessible market for passengers.

Nevertheless, as Hiscock said “This puts another stepping stone in place, although it’s not a solution,” so the company will still have to struggle for further investment but the pressure has been alleviated for the imminent future.

Meanwhile Vern Raburn, ceo of Eclipse Aviation commented: “We have made the first metal cutting marks, which is a very exciting and significant milestone in the production of the Eclipse 500. Unlike the competition we continue to distance ourselves from, we are now seeing our design become a reality.” Nimbus group which placed the large order plans to use the aircraft to operate air taxi services throughout North and South America.