The range of offerings now available in the business jet segment of general aviation is quite wide. Any firm with travel requirements should be able to find a suitable aircraft for its needs.

Building aircraft specifically targeted to the needs of business travel has not always been possible. In the early days of business aviation, company executives made do with converted military and airline airplanes, which often were overly large and costly, both to acquire and to operate. Available general aviation airplanes, on the other hand, were too small and lacked performance. Fifty years ago, few business aircraft options existed above the Beechcraft Model 18 Twin Beech, even though airline fleets were rapidly converting to jet aircraft. During the following decade, this situation would be corrected.

In the usual manner of visionary industry leaders, four men saw an opportunity to build airplanes for the business jet market. Dwane Wallace, President of Cessna Aircraft, Marcel Dassault, Chairman of Dassault, William P. Lear of Learjet and Leon Swirbul, President of Grumman Aircraft, pursued different means to achieve the end result—all highly successfully.

Cessna Aircraft was known primarily as a builder of light single and twin-engine piston airplanes, but it had also supplied the T-37 jet trainer for the US Air Force since the mid-1950s, giving it valuable experience. Dwane Wallace correctly saw the need for a light fanjet-powered business transport that could service small airfields as well as large metropolitan airports. His Citation 500 would have a straight wing for good low-speed handling and, while it cruised slower than other business jets, it offered jet comfort while flying from 1,000-metre runways. First marketed in 1972, the original Citation has been joined by both lighter and heavier variants, culminating in the owner-flown Citation Mustang, the Mach .92 Citation X speedster and a large-cabin Citation Columbus 850 under development.

French designer Marcel Dassault conceived a fast twin-engine fanjet transport called the Mystere 20. Initially marketed in the US by Pan American Airways in 1965 as the Fan Jet Falcon, the Falcon series has expanded into a well-known and desirable family of business aircraft. Performance has always been the primary goal of Dassault airplanes, and the Falcons deliver it with beauty and style.

In the early 1960s, inventor and aviation enthusiast Bill Lear’s vision of a small executive jet required starting his own airplane company as well as adapting a Swiss military airplane into what became the Lear Jet. Small and speedy from the outset, the Lear legacy is now carried on by Bombardier Aerospace through a wide range of aircraft.

Grumman Aircraft sought to diversify from its military products by developing the Gulfstream series of executive transports, beginning cautiously in 1958 with the Gulfstream I, which was powered by Rolls Royce Dart turbopropeller engines. It was soon replaced by the Gulfstream II with Spey fanjet engines, introduced in 1967. Grumman’s Gulfstream division was later sold, but through the years the company now known as Gulfstream Aerospace has continually built the most sought-after of executive aircraft. This report will present each company’s current offerings.