Category Archives: corporate

Two Avantis in One Go!

Not long ago, I posted about seeing an Avanti for the first time in a while. The lack of Avantis having been broken, I have seen a couple more. I saw that one had come in to Boeing Field and I was there before it fired up for its next flight. It taxied out on the opposite side of the field and then took off to the northeast.

A short while later, I saw a silhouette of a plane on approach and looked closer to see what it was. It looked pretty like an Avanti so I figured it was the same aircraft returning for some reason. I was a bit bothered that something might be wrong but happy to get another chance to shoot it. As it got closer thought, it was clearly not in the same paint scheme. Instead, it turned out to be a Canadian registered example and a pretty nice looking one at that.

Getting two Avantis within a short space of time was an outcome I was pretty pleased with. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hang around to get the departure of the second example.

Filming With a G650ER

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I missed the best of this event. I got to Everett towards the end of a filming session with a Gulfstream G650ER jet. An Astar was being used to film the jet as it flew some approaches. I had actually noticed the jet online earlier in the day because it had been flying orbits over some of the islands and showed up on FlightRadar24. I didn’t know what it was at the time but, once I got to Everett it all became clear. I didn’t get anything of the Astar as I didn’t have the camera out when I first arrived but I did get a shot or two of the Gulfstream near the end of the flights. Looked like a fun sortie to be involved with.

Sabreliner Testbed

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The Sabreliner is a neat little jet under normal circumstances, combining as it does the wing of the Sabre with a fuselage for passengers. This example, that now lives in the Evergreen Aerospace Museum in McMinnville Oregon, is even better because it is a testbed. The nose has a new radome grafted into place to allow the testing of different radar. Meanwhile, pods can be mounted under the wings to test a variety of different sensors and electronics. Some of these different configurations are displayed alongside the airframe. Good to know that after years of specialized service, the aircraft will survive in the indoor comfort of the museum.

Great Scot!

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Dassault make some very elegant looking jets. The Falcon 7X is a particularly good looking one in my opinion with perhaps the only issue being the extension of the fin below the tailplane which looks a bit like a fix for something. This example was at Boeing Field heading out. I don’t know where it lives because it has a Manx registration which means it could be from almost anywhere. I did like the rest of the registration, though. I hope they are Scottish rather than just someone called Scott!

Are These Globals Twins?

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Within the space of a few minutes, two Bombardier Global Expresses took off from Boeing Field. This type is a regular feature at BFI so this is not unusual. What did catch my eye was that they appeared to have the same color scheme. If they were NetJets aircraft, that would make sense. However, they didn’t look like a fleet operator I know (not that I know them all). Is this just a standard scheme that Bombardier will finish the jet in if you don’t have a preference or were they connected? If so, was a group of people taking two jets at the same time to go to the same place? Who knows?

Union Pacific’s Falcon 2000

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Union Pacific is one of the large freight railroads in the US. Their fleet of locomotives is commonly seen across the US west of Chicago. They are painted yellow and carry a large American flag on the side. However, trains are not the only way that staff of UP get around. They also own a Dassault Falcon 2000 and I saw it come in to Boeing Field. While it isn’t painted like a loco, it certainly shares a few design cues with them and it looks a bit more interesting than the average all white scheme.

My First Avanti in Ages

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I do love Avantis but, for whatever reason, I have not seen one in ages. The distinctive sound used to be something I would see quite a bit in the Midwest before Avantair went bust and their frequent appearances abruptly stopped. To see this one show up was a nice treat. I have yet to see one of the latest EVO versions. They have a five bladed prop instead of the six bladed version on the previous iterations so I have yet to find out how much the tone has changed.

Honeywell Test Convair

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An older airframe is always a pleasant surprise. While I was at Everett, Honeywell had some people making a visit to Paine Field and they came in the company’s old Convair. This is not the sort of plane you see around much anymore so I was rather pleased to see it show up.

Lots of Cessna’s Small Jets

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I like bizjets but, if I am honest, my preference is for the bigger jets. The small jets are probably a more useful business tool but the big ones just look cooler. I recently have come across a steady stream of the smaller products though. The majority of these have been from the Cessna stable with CJs of various sizes popping up in front of me. Normally I don’t give them too much attention but today I am going to share a selection of the little fellas.

Legacy 600 and a Close Relative

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When you consider the large cabin corporate jets, there is one jet that has not had as much success as it deserves. The Legacy 600 from Embraer is a derivative of the E135 regional jet but transformed into a longer range and far more comfortable jet. It hasn’t done much to dent the market that Gulfstream, Dassault and Bombardier have been operating in. It doesn’t have the super long range of some of the competitor products but, given that many operators never go off the US East Coast, that range is not a big deal for many customers. Prestige is though and the Legacy has never had the same cachet given its regional jet heritage.

This one showed up at San Jose on a sunny winters day. The interesting thing was that something very similar was also flying that day. The second aircraft is not a Legacy, though. It is an E145 that is operated by Intel. They have outfitted it as a corporate shuttle. It runs their staff between their locations. I don’t know what the interior is like but externally it looks a lot like a bizjet which, I guess is what it is.