WASHINGTON (AP) – A new kind of jet – light, cheap and fast, a type of flying SUV – was expected to be certified for flight Thursday.

Thousands more are expected to take wing over the next decade.

Eclipse Aviation’s E500 will be the first “very light jet,” or VLJ, to receive a provisional certification by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The announcement, at the AirVenture Air Show in Oshkosh, Wis., is one of the biggest things to happen to general aviation in years. Acting Transportation Secretary Maria Cino traveled to Wisconsin to make the announcement.

“These planes have clearly captured the public’s imagination,” said Ed Bolen, president of the National Business Aviation Association.

The NBAA defines VLJs as single-pilot jets that weigh 10,000 pounds or less. They generally have two engines, five or six passenger seats, automated cockpits and cost half as much as the most inexpensive business jet now in service.

Six other very light jets are in the process of being certified by the FAA.

Honda Motor Co. announced Tuesday at Oshkosh that it will start accepting orders for another VLJ, the HondaJet, this fall.

The FAA officially predicts 4,500 VLJs in service 10 years from now. FAA chief Marion Blakey has called that a conservative estimate. Eclipse alone has orders for nearly 2,500 of the little jets.

The big question surrounding VLJs is who will use them and where they’ll fly.

Vern Raburn, the brash founder of Albuquerque-based Eclipse Aviation Corp., predicts VLJs will be used as air taxis: for-hire limousines-with-wings that will take off and land at thousands of small airports. Businesspeople, he says, will be attracted to them because they’ll get where they need to go faster and with less hassle than on a commercial flight – and cheaper than on a chartered business jet.

VLJs can land on runways as short as 3,000 feet, compared with the 4,000 or 5,000 feet required by the smallest jets now being flown. The FAA says there are more than 5,000 small, underused airports in the United States.

Raburn, a former Microsoft executive whose venture is being backed by Bill Gates, has two customers that are betting that air taxis will take off: Linear Air of Lexington, Mass., which offers on-demand charter service from Bedford, Mass., and Teterboro, N.J.; and DayJet Corp. of Delray Beach, Fla.

DayJet, which has ordered more than 200 E500s, expects to begin what it calls “per-seat, on-demand” jet services throughout the Southeast toward the end of 2006.

The little jets won’t be rolling off the assembly line just yet, though. The FAA granted it a provisional certification allowing all existing planes to be flown, but new ones can’t be delivered to customers until the FAA grants what’s called a type certification.

“It means most of the technical issues have been resolved,” Bolen said.

Two other companies hope to have similar jets certified by the end of the year: Englewood, Colo.-based Adam Aircraft and Wichita, Kan.-based Cessna Aircraft Co.

Cessna considers its Citation Mustang an inexpensive business jet, not an VLJ, said Doug Oliver, company spokesman. But, Oliver said, “If the air taxi market comes along, the aircraft is perfectly suited for high utilization.”

Cessna, which has produced more than 4,500 business jets for the global fleet, has about 250 orders for the Mustang, Oliver said.

The other VLJs seeking FAA certification, or FAA validation of their home countries’ certification, are:

-Javelin, by Aviation Technology Group, Inc.;

-Phenom, by Embraer, or Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA;

-G180 SPn Utility Jet, by Grob Aerospace;

-Spectrum 33 by Spectrum Aeronautical LLC.

A Spectrum 33 crashed in a test flight Tuesday in Spanish Fork, Utah, killing both pilots aboard. The cause of the crash is unknown.