The FAA has signed off on Bombardier’s ultra-long range, 19 passenger Global 7500 business jet. The Montreal-based company got the green light from the Canadian authorities at the end of September.
The Global 7500 has a range that surpasses its name. Bombardier claims the bizjet can fly as far as 7,700 nm, making it the only business jet capable of traveling nonstop from New York to Hong Kong or from Singapore to San Francisco. The range surpassed Bombardier’s initial target by 300 nm. Passengers can expect to travel in full comfort on those long trips. The Global 7500 is the first airplane to offer Bombardier’s newly introduced, patented Nuage seat, and it offers a full kitchen and four separate living spaces, which can be configured in a variety of ways including a permanent bed and a stand up shower. However, unless the plan is to fly halfway around the world, the trips won’t be long at the airplane’s top speed of Mach 0.925.
Up front, pilots are faced with Bombardier’s Vision Flight Deck, featuring Rockwell Collin’s Fusion system, including four 15-inch LCD displays, a head-up Guidance System, electronic checklists, graphical flight planning, Synthetic-Enhanced Vision System, electronic charts, FANS, MultiScan Weather Detection, LPV approach capability and more. Controls are managed with fly-by-wire sidesticks.
Despite its long legs, the airplane can fly to relatively challenging airports, such as Chicago Executive (PWK), which is located smack in the Chicago metropolitan area with three runways, the longest of which is 5,000 feet, and Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE) in Eagle, Colorado, located in the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of around 6,550 feet.
Bombardier has not yet handed over the keys to the first Global 7500 customer, but the company expects the first delivery to take place before the end of the year.
