More good PR for Eclipse, and air taxi certainly is entering the mainstream lexicon when it comes to air charter, even in neighboring Europe, where aviation pursuits are not as inexpensive and commonplace as they are in North America. The NBAA show has proved to be a good vehicle to getting information out to the press, and naturally an excellent place to make high profile announcements that affect the fabric of air charter, air taxi and the manufacturing landscape that feeds the industry. The key question, however, will always be: Who will sink and who will swim in this new paradigm of air taxi? Naturally, Eclipse will want clients with sustainable businesses so that the support, upgrade and recurring revenue part of the relationship remains strong.

This news from Flight International is typical of aviation media, which can act as a direct relay of what the subjects of the story would prefer you believe. Analysis and probing of the "true" nature of a maturing market is difficult to do in an industry that has yet to come into its own.

One thing we can be certain of, however, and that is that the herd offers the comfort of social proof and peer validation but it rarely guarantees the success of a business model. As overly simplistic as this sounds, that is how lemmings find their way falling of cliffs in large numbers. Whenever discussing "the next big thing" it is always tempting to follow those who have the best story, but as any marketing guru will tell you, if your story is not authentic, you will eventually find yourself airborne with fellow lemmings, quietly wondering at what point you stopped analyzing the direction you were running in.