Supersonic business jet heads for UW testing

Seattle, hometown to Boeing’s never-flown SuperSonic Transport, which was canceled in 1971, plays a small role these days in development of another faster-than-sound civil aircraft: the Mach 1.5 business jet that Aerion formally launched this past week.

The dartlike, three-engine AS2, which can now be ordered for $120 million, will undergo low-speed wind-tunnel testing in September at the University of Washington Aeronautical Laboratory.

The scale model built for the occasion by Arlington-based Aeronautical Testing Service is about 8 feet long and weighs roughly 300 pounds, says Aerion director of finance and planning Jason Matisheck.

The actual plane, scheduled for entry into service in 2022, will be 170 feet long with a 30-foot-long cabin interior. Aerion says the jet will cut travel time between Paris and Washington, D.C., by three hours, and save 6 ½ hours on flights from San Francisco to Singapore.

The company expects to sell about 30 of the sleek aircraft per year over 20 years. “We’re confident that the market is there. We’ve done our homework,” says Jeff Miller, Aerion vice president of marketing.

The planned tests won’t be Reno, Nev.-based Aerion’s first visit to the Kirsten Wind Tunnel at UW. “We’ve been up there at least five times now,” conducting experiments with wings, flaps and so on “to refine the low-speed handling of the Aerion jet,” Matisheck says.

He expects to run tests on the mock-up of the full plane for about two weeks.

UW wind-tunnel business manager Jack Ross says the facility charges $500 an hour for a 9-hour day. That’s not cheap, but two weeks at that rate aren’t even a rounding error in the $100 million reportedly spent so far on the AS2.

Ross can’t talk about current clients of the UW lab. But its history includes testing for a diverse array of planes over many decades, as well as the space shuttle’s 747 “piggyback” ferrying system, Kenworth trucks and Ford pickups, motorcycles and even bicycles.

While the airflow around a model just a few feet off the ground isn’t precisely the same as a full-size version in open air, the differences are well understood and the data can be adjusted, Ross says.

“What we’re trying to do is predict full-scale performance,” he says.

If Aerion’s project succeeds, the AS2 would be only the third supersonic passenger aircraft ever built, after the British/French Concorde and the Russian Tupolev Tu-144.

— Rami Grunbaum: rgrunbaum@seattletimes.com

REI finds it’s not easy being green

One would think REI staffers, following the company’s mantra, would bike, hike or kayak to work. But no: It turns out that many rely on fossil-fuel-powered vehicles to go to work peddling bikes, hiking shoes or kayaks.

In fact, employee commuting was the largest single chunk of REI’s carbon footprint — and a cloud over the co-op’s environmental credentials as it builds new stores across the country.

In its 2014 Stewardship Report, published last week, REI says greenhouse gas emissions from employee commuting grew 4.8 percent from 2013, due to the growing number of employees.

REI says it’s trying to change commuting behavior by promoting ride-sharing and alternative commuting options, but it acknowledges there are significant barriers to ditching the good old car.

For instance, there’s the frequent mismatch between transit schedules and the hours that retail workers actually put in. There’s also the simple convenience of driving, which in some cases allows for shorter commute times.

To reduce the carbon impact of employee commutes, REI provides a 50 percent pretax public-transit subsidy. But it also subsidizes parking for employees who can’t use an alternative option and need to pay to park their car.

The commuting issue “remains our biggest challenge to reducing the co-op’s GHG [greenhouse gas] footprint,” the Stewardship Report says. Nevertheless it underscores the dilemma created by REI’s unique nature as both the country’s largest consumer co-op, and its largest outdoor retailer — a $2.2 billion business that has ambitious plans for growth.

— Ángel González: agonzalez@seattletimes.com

Avalara campaign spoofs drug ads

They say nothing is certain but death and taxes. So maybe it’s not surprising that Bainbridge Island-based Avalara’s advertising campaign for a product that tackles one of those is a parody of ads for products addressing the other.

In 15 publications ranging from USA Today to BloombergBusinessweek and Fast Company, Avalara this month began running ads such as one that shows a woman with a look of pained bewilderment and a headline that says, “Connie suffers from MSTS.”

The smaller print advises that “Manual Sales Tax Syndrome (MSTS) is treatable” and suggests, “Find out if Avalara AvaTax is right for you.”

There’s even a warning box that cites “common and well documented” side effects of using the tax software — “significantly reduced risk of penalties and interest in the event of an audit, greater focus on profit-making activities … ” — and instructs the user that if these occur, “contact your accountant immediately.”

It’s more than just a gag, says Avalara creative director John Livengood. He describes the campaign as “squarely aimed at small and medium businesses,” as well as their CPAs.

Avalara’s product, which lets companies outsource the collection and payment of sales taxes to thousands of government jurisdictions, does have something in common with those inescapable TV ads for previously unfamiliar ailments like “restless leg syndrome,” he says.

“Our No. 1 competitor is the status quo — people don’t know there’s a solution. … Our situation is relatively similar: If you’re having this pain, we have a way out.”

The ad campaign, with an undisclosed budget, is unusual in that three of the six pieces show people in states of discomfort that might otherwise be attributed to a stomach malady.

“It takes a gutsy company to choose to market its product with people who don’t look happy,” Livengood says.

—Rami Grunbaum: rgrunbaum@seattletimes.com