Was the Lear Jet the First VLJ?
By J. Mac McClellan
August 2007
 I received a letter from a reader after our story on the Cessna Mustang ran in the May issue asking me to compare the Mustang to the original Lear Jet 23, to measure 40 years of progress in light business jets. Interesting idea, and there is a valid comparison, but it's not the Lear and and the Mustang. It's between the Lear 23 and the Eclipse 500.
The reason the Mustang bears no relationship to the first Lear Jet is that the Mustang comes from the leader in business jets, not a start-up company. Cessna will soon deliver its 5,000th Citation, far more than any other business jet maker. The Mustang is an all-new design, but it is the product of the most experienced maker of light and medium-sized business jets in the world.
But the Eclipse and Lear Jet have uncanny similarities in their origins. Both are from companies whose founders and leaders enjoyed success in other businesses, but had never designed and produced an airplane of any kind. Bill Lear was involved in many business ventures before Lear Jet and was best known in aviation for his development of avionics such as autopilots and ADF receivers. Vern Raburn, founder and head of Eclipse, was among the very first people to team with Bill Gates at Microsoft and also was a pioneer in computer retailing.
Both Lear and Raburn founded their companies with the objective of building small personal or business jets at unheard of low prices and in unprecedented quantities. Despite the lack of any breakthrough enabling technologies, such as development of the microprocessor in the computer industry, Lear and Raburn promised to build jets for half or less the cost of any airplane from the existing manufacturers. Apparently the low price would result from high volume, or from production techniques that offered efficiencies ignored by the established airplane makers.
When Bill Lear began promoting his light jet in the early 1960s, Lockheed was already producing its four-engine JetStar, and North American was building the Sabreliner and large companies were buying and flying them as the first corporate jets. Hawker Siddeley was putting the finishing touches on the Model 125, Dassault was well along with development of the Fanjet Falcon, and Aero Commander was working on the Jet Commander. The business jet was already established, but Lear dismissed the airplanes from the major manufacturers as nothing more than jets originally designed to compete for military contracts. That was partly true, but no major corporate executive was sneering at the standup headroom in the JetStar, nor at the comfort and performance of the Sabreliner. Lear was after a different market, primarily the individual traveling on business, not the big corporation. And Lear was building his jet almost entirely with his own money, $8 million of it, we reported at the time.
 Lear's initial plan was to convert a small Swiss fighter-bomber jet, the P-16, into a business jet, and he predicted his SAAC-23 would be delivered late in 1962 with a complete price of $350,000, we reported in our April 1964 issue. It didn't happen. Undaunted by failure, Lear blamed the Swiss aviation authorities and moved his operation to Wichita with a new promise to deliver the Lear Jet 23 for less than $500,000, a substantial price increase over the original, but still a fraction of the price of any existing business jet. A Lear Jet actually flew in October of 1963, but wholesale design changes had been made or were to come, including moving the horizontal up to a T-tail configuration, reshaping the wing leading edge to help tame the stall, speeding up the landing gear cycle time and adding 100 gallons of fuselage fuel.
Lear used the prototype as much for promotion as for development testing. The cover of our April 1964 issue had a photo of the Lear Jet flying over the New York World's Fair site even though it lacked such basic systems as pressurization. Lear relentlessly promoted the airplane in the mainstream media and focused a great deal of his attention on Hollywood and television, which gave the sleek little jet a great deal of coverage. Somebody said the Lear Jet looked like it was going 500 mph (or insert your own number) when it was standing still, and that comment was repeated over and over.
Like Eclipse, Lear aimed for single-pilot certification in the small airplane category. The Lear Jet 23 maximum takeoff weight was restricted to 12,500 pounds because that is where the rules change from small airplane to transport category. Eclipse went one step further by restricting takeoff weight to less than 6,000 pounds because that is where engine-out climb performance and other rules change and become more demanding for small multiengine airplanes. Both jets have cockpits with instruments, controls and switches arranged to be within easy sight and reach of a single pilot. The Lear Jet 23 almost received single-pilot approval, but at the last minute the FAA decreed a crew of two was required.
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