Jets

Bizjet maker Bombardier last week handed over the ceremonial keys for a Global 6000 jet to fractional firm NetJets even though the airplane won’t be ready for actual delivery until much later this year. It is only now entering completion, the stage at which the final touches, interior, paint and avionics are added. The event […]

Cessna reached a milestone on Friday when it rolled out its 400th Citation Mustang at its manufacturing plant in Independence, Kansas. The achievement comes slightly more than five years after the first Citation Mustang delivery in November 2006. Since then, the Mustang fleet has averaged 480 hours per airplane, with close to 50 aircraft above […]

The Cessna Citation Ten, the under-development version of the Citation X, Cessna’s super-fast midsize business jet, made its first flight from the company’s home field, Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, earlier this week. The jet’s first sortie was an unusually long one for a first test, lasting two hours. This gave flight test pilots time to do […]

As Boeing moves ahead with plans to leave Wichita, Learjet revealed it will expand its footprint there. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and ** Bombardier** Business Aircraft President Steve Ridolfi on Tuesday announced an expansion of the company’s Learjet production site, saying the growth will create 450 new jobs over the next seven to 10 years. […]

Citing the “fragile global economic situation,” Hawker Beechcraft has decided to slow development of the Hawker 200 light business jet, known originally as the Beechcraft Premier II, until market conditions rebound. “As you are aware, our industry is facing one of the most challenging markets in its history,” noted Hawker Beechcraft chairman and CEO Bill […]

__At the NBAA convention in October, I got to be on hand to witness one of the most significant events in the 20 years I’ve been an aviation journalist: the official rebirth of the Eclipse jet. Eclipse Aerospace — the company that bought the remnants of the original Eclipse out of bankruptcy — announced that […]

It was a big day in Savannah for Gulfstream when the company announced on Friday that it had earned provisional type certification for its ultra-long-range, ultra-large-cabin Gulfstream G650. The provisional TC will allow Gulfstream to begin completing interiors for customer airplanes while it finishes up the details of the full certification. Provisional certification is not […]

HyperMach Aerospace, a U.K. company with ambitious plans to develop a $180 million supersonic business jet, released revised performance figures at this week’s Dubai Airshow, announcing that the SSBJ will be capable of flying at Mach 4.0. That’s a marked increase from the Mach 3.6 top speed provided when the company launched the project over […]

The world’s first Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which started carrying paying passengers only last month with Japan’s All Nippon Airways, ran into its first technical glitch on Sunday when the landing gear failed to deploy. The 787’s pilots manually lowered the gear, after which the airplane landed safely in Okayama, Japan, after flying from Tokyo, according […]

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner lifted off on Wednesday for the first time with paying passengers on board, marking a milestone many years in the making for the world’s first “plastic” airliner. The jet, owned and operated by All Nippon Airways, carried 240 passengers from Hong Kong to Tokyo, a trip that some passengers paid as […]