User Guide

Flight Simulator
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Microsoft
Learjet
When most people think of business jets, they
think Learjet. For more than three decades,
through a number of corporate changes, Learjet
has produced some of the finest aircraft in the
world.
William Powell Lear was a 61 year old millionaire
entrepreneur when he began work on develop-
ment of the Learjet. Dissatisfied with the speed of
the propeller-driven craft available to business
travelers in the 1950s, he decided to build a
corporate-class jet. He wasn’t the first to develop
a “biz-jet,” but he may have been the most
audacious.
The first designs were influenced by a Swiss
fighter, the P16. Lear hired the Swiss design team
but soon discovered that the pace of life and
business in Switzerland wasn’t up to his tradi-
tional rapid-fire way of getting things done. He
moved the project to Wichita, Kansas, and with a
new American design team set about attempting
the impossible. Pundits in the aviation business
estimated it would take ten years and $100 million
dollars to accomplish what Lear wanted. He would
prove them wrong.
Lear did realize, however, that with the financial
resources at hand, traditional development
processes would not work. He decided that they
would not build a prototype, and the very first
Learjet would be built with the production
tooling—a risky method that could not tolerate a
major design error. But it worked. On September
15, 1963, only nine months after the move to
Wichita, Learjet 001 was rolled out. Just ten
months later the Learjet was granted a Type
Certificate by the FAA.
Learjets have always been designed with
performance in mind. Every effort was expended
to squeeze more speed and less drag out of the
airframe. It sprinted past the competition at 0.82
Mach with a 41,000 ft (12,497 m) service ceiling
and 1,500 nm (2,778 km) range for five to seven
passengers, and did it with a smaller price tag.
After selling the company in 1967, Bill Lear went
on to other pursuits including the unfinished
Learliner and Learfan aircraft projects. With over
100 inventions to his credit (including the eight-
track stereo) he left a rich legacy and an enduring
mark on aviation.
The next milestone, with the company now under
the Gates Learjet banner, was the introduction of
the 30 series. For the United States Bicentennial,
the company repeated the 1966 round-the-world
flight of a Learjet 24 with a Learjet 36. The new
efficient turbofan model bested the old time by 1.5
hours and used nearly 3,000 gallons (11,353 l)
less fuel. Learjet got a jet certified to fly at 51,000
feet (15,545 m), an altitude that would allow later
models to take advantage of weather, wind, and
fuel efficiency up high. The Concorde was the
only other civil aircraft certified to such heights.
Today, as a division of Bombardier Aerospace, the
company’s stars are the Learjet 31A, Learjet 45,
and Learjet 60. They are still among the most
popular aircraft in their class, and their beautiful,
sleek lines are instantly recognizable. Want
testimony to the enduring quality of the Learjet
name? Point to any business jet and ask the
average person what it is. They’ll likely say, “It’s a
Learjet.”