Learjet 25
Learjet 23, October 1964
Learjet 60XR
Bill Lear Learjet 70
Learjet 23, 1963
The Learjet turns by Mark Huber This month Bombardier commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Learjet’s first flight even as the company prepares to launch a larger new flagship, the Model 85, and switch to composite airframe construction. Since 1963, Learjet has become one of the world’s most iconic brands, often generically misused to describe any make/ model of private jet, and a conspicuous sign of affluence. Early Learjet owners included crooner Frank Sinatra and industrialist Louise Timken, and their aircraft were a far cry from the comfortable cabins of today. From 1965 to 1967, Sinatra’s Learjet 23, tail number N175FS, racked up 1,500 hours transporting him, his famous Rat Pack and a host of other showbiz friends, including Elvis, to movie locales, wild times in Las Vegas and the sanctuary of Palm Springs, Calif. The Lear was
not Sinatra’s first airplane, nor would it be his last, but it was his most notorious. This was the airplane the then 51-year-old Sinatra used to squire actress Mia Farrow on their globetrotting, whirlwind romance. It doubled as the designated escape vehicle to get out of town fast after a night of overindulgence and fisticuffs. Sinatra was just the type of customer Bill Lear loved. When Lear created the Learjet in the early 1960s, he envisioned a small, fast and simple airplane, a concept the marketplace embraced. His 20-series and the slightly elongated 30-series that followed sold briskly for more than 20 years, until long after he had left the company. Riding in the back of a Learjet once meant trips to the chiropractor and exercising bladder control, suffering and even trading a certain amount
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Learjet 31A
of dignity for the ultimate in aviation cool: speed. In those days you didn’t fly in a Learjet, you wore it. Lear never made it past the seventh grade and blissfully led his life–both personal and professional–unconstrained by convention. He invented the car radio, stereo 8-track tape system, the automatic aircraft direction finder, autopilot, aircraft automatic landing system, and many other innovations, including the design that became the Canadair Challenger, a large corporate jet that gave birth to the regional jet industry. All told, Lear held nearly 200 patents for everything from radio coils to steam-powered buses. He made and lost several fortunes along the way, was a notorious philanderer who married four times and had seven children. His mercurial personality sometimes made him hard
to work with, but on the flip side he was a master showman who cultivated the rich and famous. Author Richard Rashke penned the definitive biography of Lear, aptly titled Stormy Genius, and recently re-released it as an e-book. Rashke spoke to AIN about Lear earlier this year. “The simple fact is that Bill Lear never grew up,” Rashke said. “He was like a kid with dreams and that made him so endearing and so charming. He would just dream of new stuff all the time. He was an entrepreneur, not a businessman. Had he been a businessman he would have developed one product and stayed with it, but Bill wasn’t that kind of person. He would develop one thing, get bored with it, then find a new challenge and move on.”
No Compromise on Performance Lear first came to the idea of the Learjet while living in Switzerland in the late 1950s, his son told AIN in 2007. The aircraft, contrary to popular belief, was not based on the cancelled Swiss P-16 fighter, although Lear took some inspiration from it
including using a similar airfoil design. The aircraft was originally designed as the Swiss American Aircraft Co. Model 23, but Lear quickly changed the name to Lear Jet and moved the company to Wichita, where it remains today. He took big risks during the development of the Model 23, including skipping construction of a production prototype on soft tooling. He fed his perpetually struggling company with investor money and funds from the stereo 8-track tape player he had developed for automobiles. Lear did not compromise when it came to the 23’s performance, and for some pilots the airplane was simply too hot to handle. “The takeoff and landing speeds were like [those of] fighters,” recalls aerodynamicist James Raisbeck, whose company offers Learjet modifications. “The stall speed was 120 knots and when it stalled [the airplane] would roll suddenly.” Several design changes tamed some of these tendencies in the follow-on Models 24 and 25, but 20-series Lears retain a deserved reputation for demanding much Continued on page 36 u
It was a different world in September 1963 when the engineers and crew in Wichita gently rolled out the Learjet 23 without any fanfare at all and with no indication of the revolution it would inspire.
34 NBAA Convention News • October 23, 2013 • www.ainonline.com