New long-haul business jets give the market new momentum

Finally, the bruised busi­ness avia­tion mar­ket is start­ing to show long-awaited signs of re­cov­ery. At the start of the glo­bal fi­nan­cial cri­sis in 2008, annual busi­ness jet de­liv­eries were peaking at around 1,300. These were big num­bers at the time con­sid­er­ing that busi­ness jets serve a niche mar­ket seg­ment. In the wake of the re­cession, how­ever, annual deliveries slumped, falling by around 50 per­cent to a level they would re­main at for many years to come. After almost a de­cade of stag­na­ting pro­duc­tion vol­umes, the mar­ket greatly wel­comes any sti­mu­la­tion it can get.

Now more opti­mis­tic, analysts are confi­dent that 2019 will be the year when things start to pick up in the busi­ness avia­tion sector. After all, new air­craft models are spar­king keen inte­rest from an exac­ting clien­tele with cash to burn—in a seg­ment where single air­craft are avail­able for approxi­mately 30 million U.S. dollars but where it’s usual to pay some­where in the re­gion of 40–75 million for a brand-new pri­vate jet for long-haul routes. Ana­lysts believe that four new­comers to the biz­jet mar­ket will drive up sales in 2019 by more than ten per­cent com­pared to the pre­vious year.

More range, more luxury and more space

“There’s a sig­ni­fi­cant, almost end­less de­sire for more range, more luxury and more space among busi­ness-jet buyers,” says David Tyerman from Cormark Securities in Toronto. “We saw that with the G650, and the Bombardier Global 7000 takes it yet another step further. Every time a manu­facturer comes out with a pro­duct that’s more capable, there seems to be a mar­ket that we didn’t know existed.” Bombardier has now extended the base­line range of its Global 7000 to 13,500 kilo­meters, meaning the ultra­long-range air­craft (now known as the Bombardier Global 7500) can whisk up to 19 passengers nonstop from New York to Hong Kong, or from Singapore to Munich, in sublime com­fort.

Three rival companies dominate the long-haul bus­iness jet mar­ket: Bombardier (Canada), Gulfstream (U.S.) and Dassault (France). Gulfstream previously laid claim to the furthest reach with its G650ER, which offers an opera­ting range of just over 12,000 kilo­meters. Now the jet has been ousted from the top spot by the even further-flying Bombardier Global 8000, which can cover a distance of 14,600 kilo­meters with­out stopping to re­fuel. How­ever, it is the G500 and G600, two new­comers from Gulfstream, that are really sha­king up the mar­ket.

Higher efficiency engines boost the market

Even to the un­trained eye, the exterior of a Gulfstream jet is easily dis­tin­guish­able from other manu­fac­tur­ers’ models by its dis­tinc­tive oval win­dows. But the dif­fer­ences that make the dif­fer­ence aren’t ap­par­ent at first glance. Two key ways to in­crease the range of busi­ness jets is to give them lar­ger tanks and more efficient en­gines. The smaller G500 and the stretched, longer-reach variant, the G600—with a range of ap­proxi­mate­ly 12,000 kilo­meters—are both powered by the Pratt & Whitney Canada’s new PW800 en­gines. Munich-based MTU Aero Engines holds a 15 per­cent work share in this en­gine pro­gram, with res­ponsibility for the low-pressure tur­bine and various sta­ges of the high-pressure com­pressor.

When it comes to en­gines for busi­ness jets, MTU has years of ex­perience under its belt. “We focus on the mediumand large-cabin jets,” explains Wolfgang Mattig from MTU in Munich, where he is re­spon­sible for pro­grams de­livered in partner­ship with Pratt & Whitney Canada. MTU holds stakes of bet­ween 15 and 25 percent in the slightly smaller PW300 and PW500 busi­ness jet en­gines: “The fleet powered by these en­gines is growing fast. We’ve already de­livered around 7,000 modules to our part­ners in Canada,” Mattig says. French ma­nu­fac­turer Dassault’s popular Falcon 7X and its suc­ces­sor, the Falcon 8X, are po­wered by the PW307A and the PW307D res­pec­tive­ly and MTU has a work­share in both.

The PW800 is a re­cent addition to MTU’s busi­ness jet port­folio. “With our stake in this new Pratt & Whitney Canada en­gine pro­gram, we looking to tap into the op­por­tu­nities this seg­ment offers,” Mattig says. The PW800 has the same core en­gine as the mo­dels that po­wer the A320neo, A220, Embraer E2 and Mitsubishi MRJ pas­sen­ger air­craft. It’s also set to be­come the pro­pul­sion sys­tem for an­other im­por­tant busi­ness jet: the new Dassault Falcon 6X, which is sche­du­led to make its mai­den flight in 2021 and will form the ba­sis for a brand new ca­te­go­ry of air­craft.

Mach 0.98 and maximum headroom of 1.98 meters

The new­comers on the busi­ness jet scene have clear­ly made quite an im­pres­sion on Mattig. Both models have the PW800 as their ex­clu­sive power­plant: “As clean­sheet designs, the G500 and G600 aircraft reach speeds of Mach 0.90, out­per­for­ming all other jets in their class. When it come to the tal­lest and wi­dest cabin, the Falcon 6X—with its maxi­mum head­room of 1.98 meters—has the edge. These im­pres­sive fea­tures are sure to cause a stir among busi­ness jet cus­tom­ers, almost 65 per­cent of which are based in North America; an­other 13 per­cent are in Europe and 12 per­cent in South America.

MTU is op­ti­mis­tic about the po­ten­tial this sector holds. “The market for large-cabin busi­ness jets looks very prom­is­ing,” Mattig says, “and we ex­pect our bizjet sales to triple in the next ten years.” Analysts at Aviation Week are also ex­pecting an up­tick in the mar­ket: ac­cord­ing to a recent fore­cast, 792 busi­ness jets are slated for de­livery world­wide in 2019, with this num­ber growing to 917 in 2028. What’s also note­worthy about this fore­cast is that for the same period it anti­ci­pates de­live­ries of ultra­long-range busi­ness jets (such as the G500 and G600 or the Dassault Falcon family) to ge­ne­rate the high­est re­ve­nue of any air­craft cate­gory at al­most 105 billion U.S. dollars, trailed by large-cabin jets at around 30 billion U.S. dollars.