Jets

The first happy customers will be receiving their Cessna Citation CJ4s later this year, following last week’s announcement that the FAA has granted type certification to the latest light jet from Cessna. The $9 million (2010 dollars) CJ4 shares a type rating (including single-pilot operation) with the rest of Cessna’s CJ series. With an NBAA […]

The controls felt like a Citation CJ, but the numbers on the new Collins Pro Line 21 displays didn’t belong to any CJ I had ever flown. Level at 45,000 feet, the true airspeed was 425 knots. And it had taken only 23 minutes to reach that rarified altitude after a near-maximum weight takeoff. How […]

The very busy Teterboro Airport in New Jersey just a few miles west of Manhattan has had a 100,000-pound aircraft weight limit in place since the 1960s, and that has effectively kept the Boeing and Airbus business jets from operating there. But the Embraer Lineage 1000, a business-jet version of the 190 airliner, can meet […]

Despite the lingering recession, in late November, Gulfstream reached yet another 2009 milestone when company test pilots made the successful first flight of the newest Gulfstream business jet, the ultralong-range G650. The flight was unusually short, just 12 minutes, as the pilots, Jake Howard and Tom Horne, along with flight engineer Bill Osborne, returned for […]

Embraer recently revealed a number of intriguing new details on the Legacy 450 and 500, the midsize jets that it officially launched 18 months ago. The jets are still a couple of years away from first deliveries, but Embraer has already defined them in great detail. At face value, it might seem that Embraer picked […]

For the second time in a week, Gulfstream rolled out a new model of business jet when the super midsize G250 taxied briskly into view of a crowd at Israel Aerospace Industries in Tel Aviv in early October. The G250, which is owned by Gulfstream, will be assembled by IAI and then flown to Gulfstream […]

At the National Business Aviation Association Convention in late October, Embraer announced a new model, the Legacy 650, a large-body bizjet based on the company’s popular EMB 145 regional jet. The airplane is an outgrowth of the Legacy 600, the company’s first business jet. Embraer has delivered 179 Legacy 600s. It will continue to produce […]

After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles forbade the defeated Germans to build any military aircraft. Nevertheless, perhaps because something forbidden — even a mere apple — becomes irresistibly desirable, Germany in the 1930s surpassed all other nations in aeronautical technology. Two of Germany’s most talented and ambitious designers were Willy Messerschmitt and Ernst […]

I have been to dozens of new airplane rollouts in the last 30-plus years, and I was amazed when the all-new Gulfstream G650 taxied into view at a rollout ceremony in late September under its own power. That just doesn’t happen. Rollout ceremonies are usually a party to show that the airplane is getting close, […]