Bombardier LearJet: Building The Perfect Private Jet | Aviation Station

A 2012 documentary about the making of a 14 million dollar private jet. This documentary goes inside the Lear Jet factory in Wichita, Kansas USA to see how these small but expensive planes are made.

Learjet is a Canadian-owned aerospace manufacturer of business jets for civilian and military use based in Wichita, Kansas, United States. Founded in the late 1950s by William Powell Lear as Swiss American Aviation Corporation, it has been a subsidiary of Canadian Bombardier Aerospace since 1990, which markets it as the "Bombardier Learjet Family". The 3,000th Learjet was delivered in June 2017.

In February 2021, Bombardier announced the end of production for all new Learjet aircraft in 2021, with the continuation of support & maintenance for aircraft currently in service.

Learjet was one of the first companies to manufacture private, luxury aircraft. Lear's preliminary design was based upon an experimental American military aircraft known as the Marvel, substituting fuselage-mounted turbojet engines for ducted fan turboshaft engines.[4] However, that preliminary design was abandoned & the final Learjet design was instead adapted from an abortive 1950s Swiss ground-attack fighter aircraft, the FFA P-16.

The basic structure of the Swiss P-16 aircraft was seen by Bill Lear and his team as a good starting point to the development of a business jet, and formed the Swiss American Aircraft Corporation, located in Altenrhein, Switzerland, and staffed with design engineers from Switzerland, Germany & Britain. The aircraft was originally intended to be called the SAAC-23. The wing with its distinctive tip fuel tanks and landing gear of the first Learjets were little changed from those used by the fighter prototypes. Although building the first jet started in Switzerland, the tooling for building the aircraft was moved to Wichita, Kansas, in 1962. Bill Jr stated that it took too long to get anything done in Switzerland despite the cheaper labor costs.[6] LearJet was in a temporary office that opened in September 1962 while the plant at Wichita's airport was under construction. On February 7, 1963, the assembly of the first Learjet began. The next year, the company was renamed the Lear Jet Corporation.

The original Learjet 23 was a six- to eight-seater & first flew on October 7, 1963, with the first production model being delivered in October 1964. Just over a month later, Lear Jet became a publicly owned corporation. Several derived models followed, with the Model 24 first flying on February 24, 1966, and the Model 25 first flying on August 12, 1966. On September 19 of the same year, the company was renamed Lear Jet Industries Inc.

In 1990, Canadian company Bombardier Aerospace purchased the Learjet Corporation. The aircraft were then marketed as the "Bombardier Learjet Family". On October 10, 1990, the Learjet 60 mid-sized aircraft had its first flight, followed on October 7, 1995, by the Learjet 45.

In October 2007, Bombardier Learjet launched a brand new aircraft program, the Learjet 85. It was the first FAR Part-25 all-composite business aircraft. Bombardier celebrated the 45th anniversary of the first flight by a Learjet with 2008's Year of Learjet campaign. One of its highlights was British Formula One racing driver Lewis Hamilton racing a Learjet & winning an event at the Farnborough Air Show.

On October 28, 2015, Bombardier announced the cancellation of the Learjet 85 program.

On February 11, 2021, Bombardier announced the end production of all Learjet aircraft. Bombardier also announced they would continue to fully support the Learjet fleet well into the future, and launched the Learjet RACER re-manufacturing program for the Learjet 40 & Learjet 45 aircraft. As Bombardier focuses on its larger Challenger & Global jets, the final aircraft, a Learjet 75, was delivered on 28 March 2022 after 60 years of production, delivering more than 3,000 aircraft, of which more than 2,000 remain in service.

Learjet started off in Wichita, Kansas, and as of 2013 has over 3,200 employees. Wichita was not the only candidate for the location of Lear's project. Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Ohio were also both locations that were being considered. There were already a few other aircraft companies that were located in Kansas, which meant there were many more potential workers who would possess the skills that Lear needed to run his company in the design & manufacturing of the aircraft. Lear was offered an industrial revenue bond of 1.2 million US dollars. This would be known as the first historical industrial revenue bond offered by the city.[13] To this day, the Learjet facility is still located in Wichita, Kansas, and is currently getting ready to be renovated, by expanding the Flight Test Center & building a new center for delivery.

Enjoy!

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