'Down-to-earth rich guy' gets dream planes soaring

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Nothing about Rick Adam's resume seems to have prepared him to be an entrepreneur: West Point grad. Air Force officer. Software designer. Wall Streeter.

Yet Adam, now 60, is leading a 9-year-old start-up company that is part of what may be the biggest innovation in the $15 billion-a-year general aviation aircraft manufacturing business since the first corporate jet in 1964.

With manufacturers Cessna, Embraer, Honda and Eclipse — an Albuquerque-based start-up led by Adam's fellow high-tech refugee Vern Raburn — his Adam Aircraft is in the process or rolling out a new category of plane, the cheaper, lighter "very light jet," or VLJ.

All the manufacturers are boasting of their innovations. Adam is promoting his A700 as the world's first and only corporate jet made entirely of new-age composite materials, which are lighter than aluminum, and the plane's relatively inexpensive modular, interchangeable instruments.

If the self-confident Adam is right, all airplanes may someday be built that way. Adam expects his six-passenger A700 to receive safety certification this year. He says his privately held company has 400 orders worth more than $800 million already on the books.

At $2.2 million, the A700 will be about half the cost of the lowest-priced corporate jet now on the market. Adam's other product, the $1 million all-composite A500, first delivered to customers in 2006, is similarly cheaper than comparable twin turboprops on the market.

Keeping close tabs

Adam's "office" is a modular desk on the production floor of a large hangar at Centennial Airport. It's just five steps away from where the No. 3 A700 is being outfitted for the safety certification and flight-test program. In the past, he has set up his desk wherever his attention was needed most.

Former Adam Aircraft president Joe Walker, a veteran corporate jet salesman whom Adam lured out of retirement, has sold high-end Gulfstream and Cessna jets.

He marvels that "Rick is the most down-to-earth rich guy I've ever known. He's just an ordinary guy, with an extraordinary mind and passion." Walker left the company last month to deal with a serious family illness.

He jokes that he and Adam did some of their best thinking in their "executive dining room." That's what the pair call the front seats of their cars. "We go to A&W and get a couple of burgers and root beer floats, drive up to the parking out by the terminal here at Centennial (Airport, south of Denver) and watch the planes come and go like a couple of kids."