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Personal Jets have been developed on numerous occasions in the past decades. Several never went beyond the marketing mockup, several prototypes have flown, others have enjoyed limited success in military sales with civilian derivatives, but none has been a commercial success until the Cirrus Vision Jet finally made it happen. In the late 1990's and early 2000's, a flurry of new Very Light Jet programs were launched, primarily motivated by the availability of inexpensive turbine engines from Williams International (FJ22 and FJ33), Pratt and Whitney Canada (PW600), and others, as well as the wildly optimistic NASA General Aviation Program. My first job as aeronautical engineer was at Promavia in the early 1990's, working on the Jet Squalus trainer aircraft. After that, I was involved in several Very Light Jet programs including the SafireJet, the Epic Victory and the Diamond D-JET. I was one of the first engineers at Safire Aircraft in 1998 and one of the last engineers on the Diamond D-JET in 2013, so that spanned 15 years of my career. It was during that timeframe that I collected a considerable amount of data on past small jet projects, often talking directly with those involved such as Tony Fox, Carlo Ferrarin or Alexandre Couvelaire. Click the menu on the left to review some interesting VLJ/PLJ that have been flying or have been developed since World War II.
The Sud-Ouest SO6000 Triton, one of the first "personal jets" (ok, not really but close)
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