Dear Fellow Zombie Airplane Halloween Costume Wearers,
One useful tip from the movies: if you want to hide from a problematic past, assume the identity of a dead person. But instead of a dead person, why not a dead jet? At this month’s NBAA, we saw this exciting concept emerge: The Swearingen SJ30 light business jet was re-launched, or something, by a guy with a problematic past.
First, the facts of this strange development were reported in a Wall Street Journal article back in April (I’m quoted in it). To sum: a guy named Trevor Milton created a company called Nikola (Tesla was already taken) and raised a pile of cash from investors, promising a hydrogen-powered truck. It was a fraud. Funny moment from the article: “Nikola shared on YouTube in 2018 a video of a truck that appeared to be moving along a desert highway. The company later admitted that the truck had been towed to the top of a hill and allowed to roll down.”
Convicted of fraud, Milton was sentenced to four years in jail. President Trump pardoned him, which may just possibly be related to the $3+ million Milton and his wife contributed to Trump, RFK Jr, and other Trumpworld characters. Fresh out of jail, Milton discovers the long-dead SJ30 business aircraft program, for some reason.
About the jet. I know it’s dead because I wrote the obituary here 17 years ago. If something dies 17 years ago and doesn’t move for those 17 years, then yeah, it’s dead. In fact, I’d been following this jet since it was launched, at the same time I began my aviation carer, 40 years ago. My colleague Kevin Michaels and I wrote about its 1980s origins in our recent book, Time Machines: Business Aviation’s Dynamic Journey. It could have entered production as the first FJ44-powered jet. But it didn’t. It just kind of stayed on the shelf, with sequential owners and sequentially lower valuations and prospects. But here the SJ30 is again, now known as the SyberJet (for some reason), unveiled to great fanfare at NBAA.
This could turn out to be a perfectly legitimate effort to re-start a neglected and overlooked aircraft program. Also, I might be short listed as the next Pope. The best part from the WSJ article (okay, second best, after the fake truck drive): “Investor documents said that SyberJet is seeking to raise $1 billion from investors and claimed the company currently has a valuation of $4 billion.” I’m quoting this because I haven’t seen these investor documents. I wish I could see them, for the same reason I wish I had saved my childhood Mad Magazine collection.
We don’t know how much Milton paid for the SJ30 rights and assets; I’m guessing it was a few bottle caps or a shoe. Economists say that you shouldn’t be able to find a $4 billion bill on the pavement, but hey, what do they know?
Now, I somehow have both too much and not enough to say. I’ll just make some random observations:
1. If this is a grift there’s something refreshing about this grift. Think of all the weird aspirational stuff our industry is bombarded with these days. The SJ30 isn’t powered by hydrogen or hundreds of AA-cell batteries. It isn’t an eVTOL, or made of unobtanium, or a supersonic jet powered by engines that, for some reason, will first be built to power AI datacenters. It isn’t built by a politically well-connected new tech defense prime, seeking its own massive valuations and making weird promises to build everything from missiles to drones to nuclear submarine components to laptops. The SyberJet is none of those. It’s merely an effort to raise a billion dollars to resurrect a 40 year old dead jet. Simple, really.
2. Apropos of all that, here’s a quote from the morning after the election: “They are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing.” Quoth Senator Edward J. Markey, (D-Mass), about investigations of technology executives. It’s a fair bet that things like overvalued dead resurrected jets are going to invite scrutiny. In fact, there will be large red neon letters over the SJ30 plant that say, “GOVERNMENT SCRUTINY INVITED.”
3. A few other warning signs (and you really shouldn’t need any more warning signs): The new SJ30 owners say they will do their own avionics for the re-birthed dead jet. “What a great idea!” said nobody in our industry, ever. Also, again from the WSJ article, “Among those working on SyberJet’s behalf are Chris LaCivita Jr., the son of the co-manager of Trump’s 2024 election campaign.” Not sure the timing on this is 100% flawless.
4. I’m sure there’s been tons written on this, but there seems to be a cult of the dropout. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college. That created a halo for those who followed. Anduril’s Palmer Luckey dropped out. Elizabeth Holmes dropped out. Trevor Milton? Yeah, dropped out. There’s a certain class of investor that simply has a type. And for all the “inspirational” stories, I can’t think of any successful aerospace industry luminaries who dropped out of college, since Howard Hughes. That Silicon Valley “Fake it till you make it” ethos has no place in aerospace. Don’t get in any planes designed or built by a dropout.
5. We appreciate aero things that remain in production for remarkable lifespans (the C-130, the PT6 turboprop, the King Air, etc.) but really don’t take the time to appreciate things that stay dead yet somehow extant for what seems like forever. The SJ30 is kind of in a class by itself in this department. In fact, seven years before I wrote that 2007 obituary, I served as an aerospace consultant in Taiwan, and the folks behind the Sino part of what was then Sino-Swearingen covered their heads in disbelief and horror about its fate. So this thing has been valiantly struggling to remain dead for almost three decades.
Last word: I wish. Something tells me this isn’t the last word about SyberJet, or the SJ30. That’s what happens when you raise the dead.
Yours, ‘Til I find a measly $500 million bill on the pavement,
Richard Aboulafia