Who Owns Learjet

Today, fifty years ago, Bill Lear was standing on a strip of air watching his lifetime saving take off from an airfield in Wichita, Kansas." The Lear Jet became a synonym for personal jet and established the standards for decade, also due to Lear's persistence in high performing and a sophisticated market research approach based on the use of softwares long before anyone knew what it was like.

All Lear could do was stand in horror and see his dreams go up in flames. "The number one crashed," remembers Clay Lacy, a long-time girlfriend and partner of Lear, who passed away in 1978. "This was the best thing that ever happened to Bill Lear. "When the Lear-Jet was first flown on October 7, 1963, there was nothing on the civil aircraft scene that could match its capabilities.

While the Lear was not the first civil aircraft for purchase, the previous ones were larger, much more expansive, and never as comfortable as the minute Wichitas. Nowadays, the originally Lear 23 and 24 aircraft fade because their loud and thorny thrusters are extremely pricey to run and are not neighborly at many highways.

However, they can still exceed the vast majority of currently manufactured personal aircraft. But Lacy thinks that the Lear plane has raised the standard for every plane after it. Part of Bombardier today, the airline began in 1960, when Lear saw the possibility of building an aircraft that could compete with the ever more beloved aircraft of the fifties.

Many of the country's largest corporations were flying planes like the Douglas DC-3 or Beech Model 18. The Lear knew that firms manufacturing commercial jets that could not keep up with the new Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8 flying at 550 mbph would drop back quite literally and metaphorically. "When you don't, I will," Lear said to aeronautical and space directors in Wichita, Lacy said.

Everybody giggled, but Lear laughed last. The Lear had a long tradition ofnnovation. In addition to his work on the first automobile stereo in the early 1920' - he and Paul Galvin named the new model "Motorola" - Lear also designed early auto pilot sytems and wireless sounding devices in the 1930'.

In 1964, while still working closely with his aircraft shop, he created the 8-track tape recorder, initially named Lear Airplane Stereo 8. Lear, who wanted to start his own concept of a privately owned aircraft, purchased an aircraft plant in Switzerland after the nation abandoned planning to construct a small combat aircraft.

Lear had got everything ready after a hard race in Europe and went to Wichita in early 1963. Then Lacy asked him why he would settle in the backyard of his rivals. "Lear wanted to make a plane that could cross at Mach 0.8 (~530 mph) and could soar at 41,000 ft.

According to Lacy, every case in which a choice had to be made, Lear chose to be simple while maintaining it. All went well, and Lear saw his aircraft make its maiden voyage on October 7, 1963. This was a frightening period for Lear, as he was run out of cash at the age.

First Lear jet ever produced crashes. First Lear jet ever produced crashes. "You started with a spoiler up and an enginehut down," says Lacy. Baffles are supposed to decelerate the plane when it descends, and it's almost impossibly to take off if they stay up.

Him and the Lear driver seated next to him had failed to park the wings for the start. Initially it seemed to be a catastrophe, but soon Lear was able to turn the crash into the exact fracture the business needed. "Lacy says he didn't have much money." Better yet, Lear was able to make some phone conversations with well placed Washington mates.

Soon the FAA allocated enough personnel to go through the certifying programme and Lear received approval for his new aircraft only two month after the crash (and only nine month after the aircraft's first flight). Lear's pace and budgeting from concept to credential is notable.

Today the development of a new jets can costs more than 1 billion dollars and take more than a ten year (see: ECOlipse Jet). Certifying the Lear Jet 23 for nine months only costs 14 million dollars. Admittedly, "things were different, the value of your cash, but not so very different. "Said Lear and Martin Lear would become great buddies early on.

was a United Airlines passenger who was selling planes on the side. Allen Paulson - who would one of these days own the Gulfstream corporate aircraft manufacturer - was persuaded to commit himself as a dealer. Paul thought about the notion for a while and finally said to Lacy that he wanted to make a short journey to Wichita to see the Lear plane.

"So why don't you take me back there with your P-51 and I'll take a look," Allen said to Lacy. Arriving in Wichita, the Lear Jet trip closed the deals. "Lacy said it was blew away." Not a single privately-owned plane on the globe could compete with the Lear Jet 23, which surpassed even most commercially and militarily powered planes.

"It' going to mount an F-86," says Lacy, and refers to the North American air force commander who dominated the sky during the Korean War. At the California Air National Guard, Lacy flown the F-86 and says the Lear 23 could hit her at 40,000ft. "Lear lasts 14 mins, and that's a perfectly ordinary climb," he says.

" Everyone who wanted to go quickly and stylishly had one. Allens Lear Jet dealers on the western seaboard and Lacy sold all other dealers in the state. Sinatra Frank got one. Another client, Danny Kaye, soon became a Lear Jet car showroom mate. Large companies like Boise Cascade and the then omnipresent Rexall Drug also purchased Lear jets.

Everyone who wanted to go quickly and stylishly had one. Lacy, located at Van Nuys Airfield just off Los Angeles, knew Lear would be the key to his success. As Lacy remembers, he was with Bill Lear at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel when he was pulling out the Beverly Hills telephone directory.

"How much does it take to get the Lear jet to go an hour?" Bill said. Consuming 18 euro cent per gal and the costs of servicing and maintaining the car, they reached 135 dollars per hrs. Lacy got the directory from Lear. "and take him on a flight," he said.

" "We' ve flown a great many people," says Lacy. In addition to numerous VIP air planes, the Lear Jet was also shown on TV shows such as The Dating Game, where the winner was taken to Las Vegas or San Francisco. The name Lear Jet had become part of populace within a few years.

At the end of the 1960' Lear had divested his enterprise to the Gates Rubber Co. and thus the dealers (and the name was given to Learjet). In 1968, Clay Lacy founded the first ever fleet charters at Van Nuys with a Lear aircraft.

He currently operates a 55 jet aircraft squadron, among them the first Lear jet he ever had, S12. Van Nuys is now home to more than 250 privately operated planes. After Lear divested the business, Learjet switched owners several of the time, and today the company's latest cars still come off the production line.

Learjet was purchased by the Canadians in 1990 and currently has four different model series. New Learjets are still much -loved planes, although planes from Cessna and Gulfstream are increasingly fast and far. Clay Lacy still operates a regular service at the age of 82. It has more than 53,000 flight hour flight history, and many of them are in the older (and newer) Lear Jet, "it does as hell as a small warplane.

" Recently Lacy was flying one of his Lear 12s at the Reno Air Races. "It'?s a good thing he was shooting for the best, for the lunar, so to speak," says Lacy about Lear's initial scheme.