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.

FMI: www.gulfstream.com