Gulfstream will deliver G700s at a rate of around 17 aircraft each quarter for the remainder of 2024, following the long-range business jet’s certification last month.
Savannah-based Gulfstream has already started shipping G700s to customers – it announced the handover of two examples on 23 April – but due to the overrunning certification process has built up a substantial inventory of undelivered jets.
Its goal is to deliver 50-52 G700s this year – a target that has not been changed despite the delay to certification, says Phebe Novakovic, chief executive of parent company General Dynamics.
Briefing analysts on the company’s first-quarter performance on 24 April, Novakovic said that Gulftream’s total of 24 deliveries in the three months ended 31 March were “fewer than planned, but three more than the year-ago quarter”.
However, deliveries of the Rolls-Royce Pearl 700-powered twinjet will ramp-up as the year progresses, she adds.
“As is now apparent, we plan to deliver a considerable number of G700s in 2024,” she says.
A first batch of 20 aircraft are “fully built” and deliveries are under way; by the end of April “the next seven or eight will be ready”, says Novakovic.
Asked about the pace of shipments for the remainder of the year, she says Gulfstream will deliver G700s in “about equal amounts… in the second through the fourth quarters”.
Meanwhile, flight-test and certification activities continue on the ultra-long-range G800 – a sister ship to the G700 – and the large-cabin G400.
Novakovic says the 8,000nm (14,800km)-range G800 “continues to progress well” with certification targeted around nine months after the G700 – pushing the milestone to around year-end or possibly early 2025.
However, she cautions that “I’m increasingly reluctant to give estimates about these things that are ultimately out of our control”.
Similarly, she offers no firm timeline for the G400, save to say that it will fly in the third quarter of 2024.
Revenue at the aerospace business unit, which includes completions house Jet Aviation, stood at $2.1 billion for the quarter – $192 million, or 10.1% up on the same period last year. Operating earnings were $255 million, a $26 million or 11.4% year-on-year increase.
