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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 1227.PDF
FLIGHT FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL Quadrant House: The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS, England FtlGHT TELEPHONE NUMBERS t dialling trom outside the Uniled Kingdom prefix numbers with +4481 For exsnsle 081-661 3321 becomes +4481 661 3321 EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES: 081-661 3842 EDITORIAL FAX: 081-661 3840 DISPLAY ADVERTISING: 081-661 3315 DISPLAY ADV FAX: 081-661 8981 CLASSIFIED ADV: 081-661 6373 CLASSIFIED ADV FAX: 081-642 4431 TELEX: 892084 REEDBP G EDITOR Allan Winn 081-661 3882 EDITOR'S SECRETARY Jacky Worsley 031-661 3882 DEPUTY EDITOR Graham Warwick 081-661 8808 ASSISTANT EDITOR ART AND PRODUCTION Fortes Mutch 081-661 3852 ASSISTANT EDITOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS Tom Hamil! 081-661 3096 NEWS EDITOR Andrew Chuter 081-661 3843 OPERATIONS'EDITOR Mike Gaines 081-661 8S09 TECHNICAL EDITOR Guy Norris 061-661 3836 AIR TRANSPORT EDITOR David Learmount 081-661 3845 REPORTERS Douglas Barrie 081-661 3836 Eric Beech 081-661 3837 Simon Elliott 081-661 3838 Ian Goold 081-661 3834 Alan Postlethwaite 081-661 3839 SUB EDITOR Annabel Goddard 081-661 3848 LAYOUT/SUB EDITOR Jenny Long 081-661 3847 ART EDITOR Colin Paine 081-661 3850 LAYOUT ARTIST Mike Wells 081-661 3828 EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Kale Sarsheld 081-661 3842 TECHNICAL ARTISTS Tim Hall 081-661 8047 David Fiafchard 081-661 8047 Jolin Marsden 081-661 8054 EUROPEAN EDITOR, BRUSSELS Julian Moxon (32) 2 657 9689 FAX (32) 2 657 5260 PHOTOGRAPHER (EUROPE) Mark Wagner 0272 358200 WASHINGTON BUREAU Kieran Daly (703) 836 7443 FAX (703) 703 836 7446 LOS ANGELES BUREAU John Bailey (714) 760-6618 FAX (714) 760-6619 PHOTOGRAPHER (USA) Craig Schmitman (213) 391 8981 PARIS CORRESPONDENT Gilbert Sedbon (1) 4825 5261 ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT Arie Egozi (3) 9671155 US WEST COAST CORRESPONDENT Norman Lynn (408) 778-0889 FAX (408)778-9976 SPACEFLIGHT CORRESPONDENT Tim Furniss 0237 451 756 FAX 0237 451 600 DISPLAY ADVERTISEMENT SALES MANAGER Clive Richardson 081-661 3315 VICE-PRESIDENT US SALES John Tidy (714) 756-1057 CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENT SALES 081-661 6373 RECRUITMENT 081-66! 6373 ADVERTISEMENT PRODUCTION Howard Mason 081-661 3267 PUBLISHER Gavin Howe 081-661 3675 For lull advertisement sales information see page 48. SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGER A Walden (0444)441212 SUBSCRIPTIONS ENQUIRIES Oaklield House, Perrymcunt Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH,England BACK NUMBERS 081 661 3315 timiled numbers of RECENT ISSUES ONLY. E2.00/copy (CASH WITH ORDER ONLY) from Flight International, Room L531 Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS. USA NEWSSTAND SALES ENQUIRIES Worldwide Media Services Inc. (toll-free), 1-800-345-6478 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORIES 0707 46952 FAX 0707 46936 Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation C OMMEHT Stimulating business Stimulating a depressed market is never easy, manufacturers of general-aviation aircraft will attest. Rock-bottom pricing has not worked, Piper will agree. Neither has innovative technology, Beech will admit. Cessna believes it has found a way to stimu late at least one sector of the depressed general- aviation market. When business-aircraft sales did not pick up as expected after the early-1980s slump, the Wichita- based manufacturer reafised that owners saw no benefit in trading in their exist ing aircraft just to buy essentially the same machine at a much higher price. Business aircraft are not fike executive cars; there is no new body style every year to entice the buyer to trade in last year's model just to keep up appearances. There has to be a greater incentive. Cessna's answer was to im prove its then-best-selling Citation II business jet, stretching it to produce a visibly different and tangibly better product. The resulting Cita tion V is now today's best-selling business jet. Cessna's "trade up in easy stages" strategy includes taking its bigger, faster Citation III downmarket to close the gap with the Citation V and upmarket to provide a stepping-off point for the new, high-speed, long-range Citation X. To add to the choice, Cessna has introduced the entry-level Citationjet which is designed to tempt turboprop operators to switch to business jets and step on to the upward-leading ladder of its expanded Citation range — from Jet to II to V to VI to III to VII to X. If the mathematical progression seems shaky, the strategy appears sound. The planned prod uct obsolescence of executive cars has been eschewed in favour of a planned product evolu tion which draws the customer into, and then upwards through, an almost seamless range of business jets. Other manufacturers have similar aims. Brit ish Aerospace 125-800 operators can now grow into the bigger, better BAe 1000 and there are signs the UK manufacturer has an even bigger, even better business jet on the drawing board for customers who outgrow its current products. Aircraft are not like executive cars; there is no new body style every year to entice the buyer." For those Dassault business-jet operators to whom the Falcon 900 trijet represents a pres ently unattainable goal there is now the more- affordabfe Falcon 2000 widebody twin. What the French manufacturer's next step will be — and in which direction — is not yet clear. Equally unclear is how successfuf the mar riage of the Learjet and Canadair fines will be under the ownership of Canada's Bombardier. Learjet's Model 31 provides an entree to a business-jet range that now culminates in the Challenger, with the new Learjet 60 • endeavouring to bridge the gap. How Beech plans to counter the business- jet challenge to its turboprop range re mains to be seen. Starship is an attempt to take turboprops into the jet arena, while Beechjet repre sents an opportunity to develop a parallel business-jet range. After a flirtation with Swearingen's entry-level SJ30, Gulfstream remains committed to offering only the biggest and the best in business jets. With any supersonic Gulfstream/Sukhoi un likely to emerge this century, the US manufac turer must now address how to stay on top through the latter half of this decade. Business-jet builders are not as hamstrung by product-liability overheads as private-aircraft producers — jets cost more and their corporate owners take greater care of them. Cessna's "easy stages" strategy does not therefore seem to represent a solution to the light-aircraft sector's ills — that depends on overpowering the law yer's lobby on Capitol Hill. If US product-liability law is reformed — and reformers were cfoser to success last year than ever before — manufacturers should not be surprised if sales do not take off as expected. A 20-year-old light aircraft might still seem better value to a private pilot than essentially the same machine built and sold at today's prices. Manufacturers must at least be ready to meet the challenge of a re-awakened light-aircraft market — however remote that prospect might seem. That challenge — as Cessna has discov ered with business jets — is not to produce, but to produce what the customer will want. • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL T5 - 21 May, 1991
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