Raytheon Aircraft is believed to be planning a new derivative of its Hawker 800 to fill the product gap between the newly certificated Hawker 850XP mid-size jet and the large cabin light jet Hawker 400XP.
Speaking before EBACE, Brad Hatt, Raytheon’s president global commercial sales for both Beechcraft and Hawker brands, admitted there was a major gap in the company’s offering.
“We recognise that there is a market segment that we are not addressing, somewhere between the Hawker 400 and the Hawker 850XP,” Hatt said. “This segment is being served by the Bombardier Learjet 45 and the Cessna Citation XLS and is an area that we need to be in.”
It seems likely that Raytheon will work on the 800 platform to offer a downsized model rather than enhance the 400. The new model will make use of the extra large cabin that has seen the Hawker 800 series achieve market leadership in the mid-size category.
Any formal announcement is unlikely to be made before the last quarter of this year.
The Hawker 850XP has a range of 5,000km (2,710nm) and the 400XP 3,120km. The Citation XLS has a range of 3,440km and the Learjet 45 3,900km. Learjet also has the XR derivative of the 45 which has a range of 3,700km.
Source: Flight Daily News
