Bombardier reports delivering more than 300 Challenger 604 aircraft in the past decade, making its "entry-level" large-cabin business jet the single best-selling model in the heavy-iron category in that time. It has certainly lived up to its name as a challenger to the status quo, and it's easy to understand its popularity. Cabin comfort means a lot in this class and no other purpose-built business jet has a wider cabin cross-section.
Each year we editors at B&CA exchange observations on people who have made significant contributions to the business aviation community. Because of these remarkable individuals' special vision, determination and actions, business aviation operations have been made safer, less constrained, faster and more cost effective. Fortunately, we have been blessed with many such contributors over the years and many are at work for our collective benefit right now.
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.
These are the options that are currently planned for the Hawker 4000. We do not have finalized prices on everything yet so we have not included any. Avionics Options - Third crewmember audio and oxygen - Honeywell third comm - Honeywell MCS-4200 satcom - Honeywell CMS (communication management function) - AirCell ST Iridium phone system - FA2100 flight data recorder - 2nd Honeywell ADF - FAR Part 135 options
There was a time when aviation fuel choices were limited to a few brands. Back then you paid the going price and the bill came at the end of the month. End of story. But now more than ever business aircraft operators want to squeeze every ounce of fuel they can out of every dollar invested.
Forty years ago, when corporate pilots like 2005 NBAA Doswell Award recipient Ron Guerra and his business aviation colleagues began flying their employers' new Lockheed JetStars and Grumman Gulfstream IIs overseas, they had little support outside their flight departments beyond the local FAA flight service station.
IT SEEMED LIKE I HAD HARDLY returned from one weeklong trip when I was departing on another, this time to attend the NBAA convention in Orlando, and under quite different circumstances. On the earlier excursion my conveyance was a Falcon. For much of that trip, my wife and I had the cabin to ourselves. We savored the spaciousness, the quiet and the privacy and delighted in the convenience, since we departed from and landed at Westchester County Airport, less than a mile from the office.
IT SEEMED LIKE I HAD HARDLY returned from one weeklong trip when I was departing on another, this time to attend the NBAA convention in Orlando, and under quite different circumstances. On the earlier excursion my conveyance was a Falcon. For much of that trip, my wife and I had the cabin to ourselves. We savored the spaciousness, the quiet and the privacy and delighted in the convenience, since we departed from and landed at Westchester County Airport, less than a mile from the office.
Since almost all of the providers spotlighted here provide Web-based do-it-yourself trip planning and arrangements for vastly reduced fees over outsourcing the function to the service companies for a hefty fee, operators with some international experience may wish to take advantage of this option.
Cruising along at 0.83 Mach at 45,000 feet toward NBAA 2005 in Orlando with five passengers aboard, we glanced down at fuel flows and did a double take. The Hawker 4000 we were flying was burning 1,850 pph, about what you would expect if you were flying a Hawker 800XPi at 0.77 Mach down in the high 30s. Then, we swapped seats with the safety pilot in the cabin and checked interior sound levels.
The Hawker 4000 comes with an impressive list of standard avionics equipment, plus an unprecedented level of avionics/systems integration in the super midsize class. The basic aircraft is fitted with five, eight-by-10-inch displays in the instrument panel, twin FMS multi-function CDUs in the center console and twin armrest-mounted cursor control devices. The CDUs are used for FMS programming, radio tuning and control-display functions for certain airframe systems, including some electrical components.
These graphs are designed to illustrate the performance of the Hawker 4000 under a variety of range, payload, speed and density altitude conditions. Do not use these data for flight planning purposes because they are gross approximations of actual aircraft performance.
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.
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.
In this age of five-star super center FBOs, the GAT, for ``general aviation terminal,'' at New York's Kennedy International is quite something else. It is grey, stark, unwelcoming and remote. While the people who work there are nice enough, there aren't many of them. There's no need. At the GAT, traffic is modest on a busy day, and non-existent on others.
IT WAS COLUMBUS DAY so the schools were closed, but even without any yellow buses blocking our way, I knew we couldn't cover 15 miles in the next 10 minutes. Although we had risen with time to spare, our morning's progress had been interrupted by one unexpected bother after another, and now we were going to be late. My stomach knotted.
THE HEAT OF SUMMER HAD PASSED, so it was time to fetch mom and bring her home to Austin, Texas. As had become her habit, the 82-year-old former high school English teacher spent her summers 550 nm to the west in Angel Fire, a resort town located high in a cool mountain valley within New Mexico's Wheeler Peak range. It was Sept. 23, 2004, a perfect day for the out-and-back flight in a Cessna 421 owned by one of her sons. The plan called for him to fly to Angel Fire along with an assistant who would then drive the woman's car and belongings back to Texas.
There are moments during every takeoff when an abnormality requires that the pilot make a split-second decision whether to continue or abort a takeoff. Unfortunately the safety margin grows razor thin, if non-existent, when a pilot decides to abort the takeoff nearly at V1 speed, especially on a weight-limited runway length. There are a plethora of reasons why the ``deck is stacked against the pilot'' trying to match the accelerate-stop data generated by the test pilots during certification.
WE WERE HEADING for the cabin in the woods once again, but this time, we planned stops en route. So, we needed shelter. I called a motel. ``I'd like a non-smoking room for Saturday night.'' ``One with a king-sized bed or two queens?'' the clerk asked cheerily. ``The two queens. My wife and I are traveling with children.'' ``How many?'' ``Three.'' ``That will be cozy.'' ``And a dog.'' ``Oh my.''
After World War II, navy pilot and mechanic Guy Hill Sr. came home to Georgia to put his skills to use. After working on small planes and performing stunts on weekends, he took $10,000, half of which was borrowed from his mother, and bought an FBO at Charlie Brown Field from a mill owner who'd wearied of the enterprise. Hill nurtured his operation to prominence. Several of his children worked there part time, but Guy Jr., an aviation advocate and his only boy, signed on full time in 1988 and stayed. Guy Sr. died in 2004 but had installed his son as CEO years before.
HORSES' BRAINS ARE modestly sized for the massive bodies they control, a kind arrangement, I suppose, if your fate is to be a beast of burden. But most of the equines I've encountered wouldn't know a plow harness from a hula hoop. Rather they're the pampered darlings of well-off exurbanites, or four-legged cops that stand around a lot, or desultory dobbins who plod along tired paths with half-pint Hopalongs giddyapping on their backs.
