But More Specific? "The Airplane Will Fly When It's Ready To
Fly"
General Dynamics Aerospace Group Executive Vice President Joe
Lombardo and Pres Henne, Senior Vice President for Programs,
Engineering, and Testing said the G650, unveiled Tuesday morning in
Savannah, GA, is a statement by Gulsftream and General Dynamics
about the future of their companies. In a news conference following
the unveiling before 7000 company officers, employees, customers,
suppliers, and state and local elected officials, the pair said the
aircraft demonstrates the bullishness of Gulfstream about the
industry and the city of Savannah.
"People use these airplanes to save time. When you can save
time, and go from point a to point b which are not hubs, it's
tremendously efficient," Henne said. "The difference is startling
in terms of efficiency. It's like never leaving your office. The
airplane is ready to go when you're ready to go. It makes you
tremendously efficient from a time point of view. If we can make
them go faster, it's a great value for the customer."
The airplane, which rolled out under its own power, is the first
entirely new cross-section since the G-2, Henne said. It is the
first of five airframes that will accumulate an estimated 1800
hours of flight over the next year to 18 months.
Lombardo said the airplanes' potential customers are less
affected by the recession than some, but the economy also may have
helped in a way. The airplane was announced in March of 2008, and
30 days later Gulfstream started taking orders. "At that time, the
market was doing OK, and I don't think anybody foresaw the second
half of last year," Lombardo said. At a base price of $64.5 million
in 2009 dollars, there are approximately 200 orders on the books
for the 650. "The fact that it's going to enter into service in
2012, I think most of them,because they're very sophisticated
buyers, realize that this market's going to pick back up again, so
they want to hold on to these orders. The investment that they have
is not as substantial at this point in time. It's not until we get
further on that their investment will grow, and I think by they
they're pretty confident" that the economy will have improved, he
said.
Lombardo said they underestimated the number of orders they
thought they would receive, and they're split "about 50-50" between
international and domestic customers.
The G650 is Gulfstream's first "Fly-By-Wire" jet. Synthetic
vision and enhanced vision systems will be standard on the 650.
Lombardo said it is aligned with all of the NextGen requirement
today and into the future, which will make the aircraft very
environmentally friendly. "NextGen, and the equipment that will be
developed by the industry, as well as the FAA, is going to start
improving on that (fuel burn) phenomenon," he said". "And I think
fundamentally that is going to have an impact on greenhouse
emissions ... significant impact. So Gulfstream already has flight
into tight corridors, positioning, we're really very, very keen on
making sure that we're ahead, or at least equal with, the industry
in terms of what we do with these airplanes. And we've already
started."
In terms of Gulfstream's workforce, Lombardo said he thinks the
worst of the storm has passed. Gulfstream had laid off about 1,200,
but those layoffs ended in July, he said. But he would not say the
company would be adding employees. "I don't think we'll be adding
in the near term," he said."I would suspect that as we ramp up the
650 line, which will occur next year, then we'll look at what
happens to the rates of production on existing products and see
whether or not we can move people over, so there are a number of
staffing decisions that need to be made."
Lombardo and Henne were both guarded about giving a more
specific date than "this year" as to when the G650 would make its
first flight. "That's probably the one thing you can't predict,"
Lombardo said. "The airplane's going to dictate when it flies."
Henne concurred. "The airplane will fly when it's ready to fly," he
said.