Rest In Peace Learjet Is Shutting Down

[Husky_Khan]

Bombardier, the Montreal based company that owns Learjet, will be shutting down the once popular business jet provider after being in operation since 1963 and making over three thousand 'bizjets.'

The Wichita based Learjet currently employs around 1600 workers including 250 in the Wichita plant itself and another 800 in Canada as well. Production will start winding down in the fall. Reasons for the shutting down of production Bombardier cites include market forces and competition, especially in light aircraft, as well as the ongoing Wuflu pandemic.

The Iconic Learjet Will Come To An End After Six Decades Of Defining Private Air Travel

Time is up for the classic bizjet as Bombardier announces the end of Learjet production at its Wichita plant.

www.thedrive.com

The Learjet company had its origins in fighter aircraft design in the 1950's, with the first generation of Bizjets inspired by the Swiss FFA P-16 single seat fighter and using variants of the same engines utilized by T-38 Trainers.

 

[gral]

The Learjet company had its origins in fighter aircraft design in the 1950's, with the first generation of Bizjets inspired by the Swiss FFA P-16 single seat fighter and using variants of the same engines utilized by T-38 Trainers.

YMMV on that 'inspired by the Swiss FFA P-16'. Lear worked at FFA when they were still trying to sell the P-16(as I understand it, he wasn't part of the development of the aircraft), and the wings of the first Learjets were quite similar(in planform at least; I don't know about airfoil section)to the P-16 ones(kind of like the Lockheed Constellation had wings that were roughly up-scaled P-38 Lightning ones).

EDIT: Regarding Bombardier closing down Learjet, sad but expected; Bombardier seems to be disinvesting in aerospace engineering and concentrating in trains.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

This is sad but completely unsurprising.

LearJet currently only produces one model of business jet, the LearJet 75, and that design is woefully non-competitive because it's really only a minor refresh of the old Learjet 45 from 1995. The cancellation of the next-generation Learjet 85 in 2015 pretty much confirmed that Bombardier was going to cannibalize Learjet due to its own larger financial troubles, and the subsequent flop of the C-Series meant there was no hope at all.

Edit: Their last-gasp attempt at a "new" LearJet, the Liberty, was literally nothing more than a Learjet 75 with a couple of seats removed so that it could be marketed as a "light" business jet with the range and speed of a midsize.

Honestly? It's a Canadian company, its failure is arguably a good thing since dominating the global aerospace market is very much in the best interest of the United States.