I have recently received this year's copy of Biz-Jet and am extremely disappointed in the quality of the product. This was immediately obvious when I opened the packaging to find a book half the thickness and weight of previous years' books.

The paper of each printed page is so thin that it is see-though and, as I underline sightings of each aircraft, the book is completely unfit for purpose and I am going to have to look elsewhere. I have been purchasing JP Biz-Jet (and JP Airline Fleets) since 1984 and I am now very worried about what quality the latter will be when that is released in May/June.

Bob Smith

Lichfield

Staffs

 Hi Bob,

Interested to see what you say about JP biz-jet, have last years and this year's in front of me, and have compared the two. Agreed this year's edition is thinner, due to apparently thinner paper and smaller print in places. However I'm not sure that thinner means worse, this year's paper feels and looks much better quality than previously used. The paper previously used was quite coarse and I found it nasty to use for ink entries into the book, so I am willing to try an upgrade to the quality. 

  It seems that the book contained so much data that it was in danger of exceeding the limits of binding sizes anyway, so I would rather that an effort was made to  limit the size and weight of the volume by adjusting print sizes and paper quality, than have to pay for two volumes or get a huge brick of a book. I am pleased to see that the print size and useability of the production list section of the book has actually been increased, so obviously some thought was put into priorities for which sections would be used for notes.

  I would also suggest that a close examination of the content of the book will show a great improvement in the quality of the information has been achieved. Ownerships and operator information is more accurate than before, just look at a couple of countries like Slovakia and Finland, for example, to see how entries have been improved and operators resolved since last year. This increase in accuracy is general if you look closely, making the book better value, fact for fact. I would rather be underlining accurate information than cheaper, but inaccurate and outdated information.

  The problem is often that reference books we get used to become familiar and changes look wrong, but the sheer volume of data available on business aircraft makes fitting it all in one volume that can be carried around around is going to need a compromise or two, what would you be saying to have to pay for two volumes of JP Biz-jet this year?

Cheers

Eclipse.

 You could try using the tick box instead of underlining. :-)

Must say I'm quite happy with my copy of the Biz-Jet JP. Only small issue is that the ownership data often quotes the town where the owning company is registered instead of an airport where the aircraft is based, e.g. JCB's G550s in Uttoxeter instead of East Midlands. 

Upon closer inspection of the data contained in the Biz-Jet JP, I would like to raise two issues.

 1. The manufacturing years of newer aircraft (2007/8/9) are often incorrect, and not in line with CAA/FAA data, as there seems to be a misunderstanding between manufacturing date and delivery date, as quite a bit of time can elapse between these two dates.

2. Many ex-regs are incorrectly listed. In numerous cases the ex-reg listed was carried by the aircraft at somepoint in its life but not before the current registration. 

Please ask for examples if you need more details.

Hi Tonkrug, thanks for your feedback.

Could you please send some examples to bizga@flightglobal.com and we'll take a look into it.

I have owned my JP Biz-Jet 2009 copy for a while now. The last few months have allowed me to discover many of the good and not so good points of this edition compared to the previous years (scary, but this is actually my 31st Biz-Jet book).

Good: the "VLJs" are now shown in the main listing and not separately anymore. This way nobody will argue which aircraft types are VLJs and not real jets or vice versa.

Good: the Russian types are not being discriminated against any longer. I never understood why VIP Tupolevs, Ilyushins and co were ignored in the past.

Good: the aircraft whose registration is not known yet (e.g. in Mexico) are now sorted by type and not listed in random order any longer.

Undecided: the paper is definitely on the thin side but as a result the size of the book is now more manageable. This is a better option than using an even smaller font size. Thicker "boxes" (like e.g. in 2008) would be appreciated in the future.

Undecided: I'm not sure the 20 pages of new deliveries information really add a lot of value. By definition these tend to be the latest (i.e. higher) construction numbers. Highlighting the new deliveries (e.g. in bold) in the construction number lists would have produced more or less the same result and would have saved some trees.

Undecided: the quality of the photos is comparable to previous editions, but that doesn't mean that the selection could not be improved. I would prefer to see one photo per type only (instead of e.g two Citation III, two Falcon 50, two Legacy etc) and more types instead (e.g. Beechjet, Sovereign, Falcon 10 etc - not to mention the turboprops).

Now the bad news:

Overall the 2009 edition gives the impression that the project started from scratch instead of being based on the 2008 book, which was perhaps not perfect in all areas but would have made a good starting point. 

Not good: some biz jet types have disappeared entirely (HFB320, Piaggio 808) without even a comment. Many Merlin III disappeared as well. In the good old days all genuine biz jet and biz prop types (even the unsuccessful ones) ever built (or almost) were included. If there was a change of policy I would at least appreciate a comment in the introduction, whether I support it or not.

Not good: the absence of (most) test registrations and of the pre-delivered aircraft is a major annoyance. I understand this saves a lot of work for the editing team, but the truth is that aircraft do fly with these registrations (sometimes over a longer period) and are being seen by the enthusiasts. JP Biz-Jet is no longer "the" reference if this information has to be found from other sources.

Not good: older types converted with new engines (e.g. HS125, Falcon 20 etc) are now shown as the original version again - again without explanation. In other words the 2009 edition is simply less accurate and up-to-date than the previous ones.

Not good: in many cases the "year built" information (which used to be consistent with information from other - e.g. government - sources overall) has been replaced by more or less relevant delivery date information - again without explanation.

Not good: the criteria used for deciding which airliners to include or not don't seem to be very consistent to say the least...

Not good: the names of many operators have become less accurate than in the past, losing their AG, SA, GmbH, SpA, SRL etc suffix.This is probably not a major issue, but if you want JP Biz-Jet to be seen as "the" reference then 100% accuracy is expected.

Not good: the format of some construction numbers (e.g. Beechjet, King Airs) seems to have been changed for the only purpose to make the sorting by computer easier.

Not good: the definition of "parked" aircraft should be revisited, e.g. I doubt the French air force will ever put a Paris back in service...

I'm sure I could find a few more issues, but the list is long enough already. I will address some more specific points via bizga@flightglobal.com. Somehow I can't help suspecting that the Flight team is another victim of the NIH ("not invented here") syndrome. You acquired a good product, but instead of focusing on the areas that could be improved you made all kinds of unnecessary changes that in the end lowered its quality - not unlike the JP airline-fleets experience. Again not unlike the JP airline-fleets experience, I hope that the 2010 edition will be better again...

Draken