Very light jets

A very light jet, entry-level jet or personal jet, previously known as a microjet, is a category of small business jet approved for single-pilot operation, seating four to eight people, often with a maximum takeoff weight of under 10,000 pounds (4,540 kg), although the Embraer Phenom 100, HondaJet and Cessna Citation M2 are slightly over. They are the lightest business jets and can be flown by single pilot owners.

There were early attempts to create small jet aircraft in this class in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the CMC Leopard.

After a flurry of interest in the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) and air taxi markets in the early 2000s, the VLJ sector underwent significant expansion. Several new designs were produced, such as the Embraer Phenom 100, the Cessna Citation Mustang, and the Eclipse 500. However, following the late 2000s recession the air taxi market underperformed expectations, and both Eclipse Aviation and air taxi firm DayJet collapsed. In December 2010, AvWeb's Paul Bertorelli explained that the term very light jet has lost favor in the aviation industry. "Personal jet is the description du jour. You don't hear the term VLJ—very light jet—much anymore and some people in the industry tell me they think it's because that term was too tightly coupled to Eclipse, a failure that the remaining players want to, understandably, distance themselves from."

Single-engine designs were popular in the mid-2000s, before the global financial crisis diminished the market appeal of the category. Most of those programs: the Piper Altaire, Diamond D-Jet, Eclipse 400 or VisionAire Vantage were shelved and the only maintained aircraft are the Cirrus Vision SF50, which is now type certified, and the Flaris LAR01, which expects certification in late 2018. They would compete with single turboprop aircraft.

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