Fred George

Chief Aircraft Evaluation Editor

San Diego, CA

Summary

Fred is a senior editor and chief pilot with Business & Commercial Aviation and Aviation Week's chief aircraft evaluation pilot. He has flown left seat in virtually every turbine-powered business jet produced in the past three decades.

He has flown more than 195 makes, models and variants, ranging from the Piper J-3 Cub through the latest Boeing and Airbus large twins, logging more than 7,000 hours of flight time. He has earned an Airline Transport Pilot certificate and six jet aircraft type ratings, and he remains an active pilot. Fred also specializes in avionics, aircraft systems and pilot technique reports.

Fred was the first aviation journalist to fly the Boeing 787, Airbus A350 and Gulfstream G650, among other new turbofan aircraft. He’s also flown the Airbus A400M, Howard 500, Airship 600, Dassault Rafale, Grumman HU-16 Albatross and Lockheed Constellation.

Prior to joining Aviation Week, he was an FAA designated pilot examiner [CE-500], instrument flight instructor and jet charter pilot and former U.S. Naval Aviator who made three cruises to the western Pacific while flying the McDonnell-Douglas F-4J Phantom II.

Fred has won numerous aviation journalism awards, including NBAA’s David W. Ewald Platinum Wing Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Articles

Fred George
The Hawker 4000's twin FADEC-controlled PWC 308As are flat-rated to ISA+20°C, the highest temperature of any super midsize jet. That's a prime reason why the aircraft has excellent hot-and-high performance. The engines feature a wide-chord, damper-less fan powered a three-stage low pressure turbine section. The compressor section has four axial-flow and one centrifugal-flow stages driven by a two-stage high-pressure turbine section. They're fitted with pneumatic starters to save weight.

Fred George
Tradeoffs are a reality of aircraft design, although engineers attempt to optimize the blend of capabilities, performance and passenger comfort. B&CA compares the subject aircraft, in this case the Hawker 4000, to the composite characteristics of others in its class, computing the percentage differences for various parameters in order to portray the aircraft's relative strengths and weaknesses. We also include the absolute value of each parameter, along with the relative ranking, for the subject aircraft within the composite group.

Fred George
In the early 1990s, Cessna's highly successful Citation Ultra faced a formidable challenge from Bombardier's clean-sheet Learjet 45, which was positioned as a "super-light" jet with a large cabin, state-of-the-art systems and 440-knot speeds. But Cessna, the undisputed master of model iteration, had an ace up its sleeve. At the 1994 NBAA Convention it unveiled the Citation Excel, a Model 560 variant that combined a shortened Citation X fuselage and widened Citation V wing.