GULFSTREAM HAS received provisional US certification for the Gulfstream V long-range business jet, enabling deliveries of customer aircraft to its Savannah, Georgia, completion centre to begin before the end of 1996.
The company says that operational limitations in the provisional type certificate are planned to be removed by mid-March, before entry into service. Delivery of the first completed GV to a customer is scheduled for late in the second quarter of this year.
Additional flight testing is planned to begin this month, to complete full certification, and includes take-offs and landings at different flap settings. Gulfstream has already acknowledged that initial GV deliveries will be 30-60 days late because of certification delays and the need for structural rework on early wings (Flight International, 27 November-3 December, 1996). The company says that it hopes to be back on schedule by mid-year.
Gulfstream planned to have delivered up to five "green" GVs to its completion centre by the end of last year and says that two aircraft a month are now entering the production cycle, alongside two GIV-SPs a month. The company has announced plans to step up combined production of the GV and GIV-SP to 60 a year by 1999, to make more aircraft available earlier. The next GV delivery position available is in the fourth quarter of 1999, while the GIV-SP is sold out until the fourth quarter of 1998, Gulfstream says.
Rival Bombardier, meanwhile, says that the second of four Global Express long-range business-jet flight-test aircraft is scheduled to be flown in January. Some 75h had been logged on the first aircraft by the end of 1996, during almost 25 flights.
Source: Flight International
