Was buying one of the first G500s, with a 0.925 maximum operating Mach number, the right decision?
James Albright
WE OFTEN LOOK AT OUR AIRCRAFT PURCHASE DECISIONS USING 20/20 hindsight afforded by the experience of a few years. Did the aircraft live up to our expectations? Were the manufacturer’s promises kept? Would we make the same decision all over again? I led the acquisition team for our company’s purchase of one of the first Gulfstream GVIIs ever produced, a G500 that rolled off the assembly line during the first year of the type’s production. It has been a great airplane for us, but I’m not sure buying an airplane before it achieves certification and system maturity is the right choice for a single-aircraft flight department. Please allow me to explain.
First, the good. We upgraded from the Gulfstream GIV to a G450 when that airplane was a few years into its production run, and the G450 became the workhorse the GIV had always been. We decided to take a risk on a brand-new type, the GVII, which promised to be revolutionary, because the promises were just so good. I can sum up the promises with our most popular oceanic trip: Boston to Paris.
The G500 was the first of the GVII series to be certified and promised to get us to Paris Le Bourget at least 30 min. faster, climbing higher more quickly, with a lower cabin altitude, and doing all of that using less fuel. All of those things have panned out in real life. We can climb immediately to 43,000 ft., sometimes 45,000 ft., immediately cruise at Mach 0.90, hold that speed for the duration, have a cabin altitude of under 4,000 ft., and burn less than 2,800 lb. of fuel per hour. As I promised our company, “We can get you to Paris faster, with less gas, and you will feel better when you get there.”
How does the aircraft perform all this magic? The primary reason is the fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system that has two major impacts on the aircraft’s design. First, the FBW eliminated the need for heavy cables, pulleys, and other hardware between the cockpit and the flight controls themselves. A lighter airplane burns less fuel, it’s that simple. Second, the FBW computers know how to maximize performance better than we flesh-and-blood pilots. Third, the aircraft design affords other weight savings, and the engines are extremely efficient.
Now the bad news. Each of the problems I am about to list has been fixed. But I will list them as an illustration of what can go wrong with a brand-new type, especially one that is quite revolutionary in design and yet to be “broken-in” by real-life experience. This is exactly what we went through.
Our initial delivery slipped by half a year because a division of the engine nacelle manufacturer, Nordam Group, went bankrupt, leaving Gulfstream with airframes and engines but no engine nacelles. In September 2018, Gulfstream bought out Nordam’s G500/G600 nacelle manufacturing line and made things right, but it set us back as they rushed to catch up.
Just before we took our delayed delivery, the FAA decided the G500 would have to comply with recently adopted guidance for the use of Type II, III and IV deicing/anti-icing fluids on airplanes. This guidance, found in FAA Policy Statement PS-ANM-25-10, meant I would be taking delivery of an airplane in December 2019 that could not use anything but Type I deicing fluid. Since we are based in New England, this was a non-starter and we refused delivery, delaying us a further three months.
We finally took delivery in the spring of 2020 and discovered the airplane was a joy to fly--the best-flying airplane I’ve ever flown, and I’ve flown a lot of airplanes—and certainly delivered on performance. But there were a lot of growing pains, which I suppose are better termed “learning pains.”
This wasn’t my first new airplane operation, but it was easily the most frustrating.
Our first flight home, for example, was especially vexing. The initial software had a bug that wouldn’t accept a high-altitude flight plan following one or two local pattern flights. We had a Gulfstream test pilot onboard and he called the lead design pilot who called every program engineer he could think of. The only solution they had for us was to reboot the airplane. (This problem has since been fixed with a software update.)
Another issue was that the manufacturer and our training vendor didn’t understand how the autothrottles engaged with the engines. Most Gulfstreams use Rolls-Royce engines that measure engine performance using Engine Pressure Ratio (ERP) where a minimum EPR is needed prior to autothrottle engagement. The G500’s Pratt & Whitney PW814GA engines don’t use EPR at all and the autothrottles rely on Throttle Lever Angle as a precursor to engagement. This wasn’t taught by our training vendor, and it was up to operators to figure this out. There were a host of other learning challenges, but most of these are now resolved.
After a year of great flying, two G500s were involved in hard-landing incidents where the pilots used inappropriate control inputs in the flare, causing the FBW to limit the Angle of Attack available to the pilots. (Long story short: don’t repeatedly “pump the stick” in the flare.) The FAA moved in swiftly and until the software was updated, we were saddled with several operating limitations. The worst of these limited us to a 5-kt. gust for landing, which is almost calm winds for many New England airports. This severely reduced our operations for half a year. Gulfstream gave us a maintenance credit and performed the eventual software update for free, but since we are a single-airplane operator, this severely impacted our company’s business.
This wasn’t my first new airplane operation, but it was easily the most frustrating. It also gave the lie to the claim of the manufacturer’s claim of a 99%-plus reliability rate. None of our lost trips due to the inability to use Type IV anti-ice fluid or predicted winds with more than a 5-kt. gust counted against the aircraft’s reliability statistics.
So, the bottom line here is this: If I had to do it all over again, back in 2018, would I have bought the proposed Gulfstream GVII-G500? No, I would have waited three years for the manufacturer to work out all of the bugs with the help of all the “beta test” operators. But, on the other hand, would I buy a Gulfstream GVII-G500 as the best available aircraft to suit my company’s needs today? Absolutely.
—James Albright is a retired U.S. Air Force pilot with time in the T-37B, T-38A, KC-135A, EC-135J (Boeing 707), E-4B (Boeing 747) and C-20A/B/C (Gulfstream III). Since turning civilian, he has flown the CL-604, Gulfstream GIV, GV, G450, and now the GVII-G500. He is the webmaster and principal author at Code7700.com
