Lear Jet: a masterpiece in business jet industry

Mention the phrase “private jet” to the average person and one word immediately pops into mind: Lear. Since its first flight in 1963, William P. Lear Sr.'s innovative aircraft, built to replicate the performance and amenities of a commercial airliner, has been tantamount with executive business travel.

Inspired by a single-seat Swiss strike fighter aircraft, the FFA P-16 (flown as a prototype in April 1955 but never put into production), Lear recruited a group of Swiss aircraft designers and engineers to transform the fighter's wing and basic airframe design into the cornerstone of a revolutionary aircraft—originally designated as the SAAC-23 but soon renamed as the Learjet 23 Continental.

The prototype Learjet 23 made its first flight on October 7, 1963, from Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport, nine months after work had begun on the project. The Learjet 23 became the first small jet aircraft to enter mass production as well as the first to be developed and financed by a single individual. The 43-foot (13-meter) long Learjet 23 had a wingspan of 35.5 feet (10.8 meters), weighed 12,750 pounds (5,783 kilograms) empty, and was powered by a pair of General Electric CJ610-4 turbojet engines. The original Model 23 was a seven-passenger jet (later increased to nine) including two pilots, fully pressurized with windshield and large cabin windows fabricated from stretched and laminated acrylic plastic. It could fly at a top speed of 564 miles per hour (908 kilometers per hour) with a range of 1,875 miles (3,018 kilometers).

Lear authorized a series of demonstration flights to showcase the aircraft's capabilities by establishing several new world aviation records. On May 21, 1965, pilots John Conroy and Clay Lacey, with five passengers on board, flew a Learjet 23 on a 5,005-mile (8,055-kilometers) roundtrip from Los Angeles to New York and back in just 11 hours, 36 minutes. Seven months later, on December 14, 1965, pilots Henry Beaird and Ronald Puckett, plus five observers, climbed to an altitude of 40,000 feet (12,192 meters) in a Learjet 23 in 7 minutes, 21 seconds—the new jet demonstrating that it could climb to 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) faster than an F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet!

The new business jet was an immediate commercial success, with more than 100 sold by the end of 1965 at an initial price of $540,000 each The high cruising altitude and long endurance flight capability of the Learjet also made it an ideal aircraft for target towing, photo-surveying, and high-altitude mapping. A number of foreign Air Forces, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and Yugoslavia, modified the corporate jet for military missions.

The Learjet, both as a technological innovation and a commercial success, is widely recognized as a trailblazer in the business jet industry. Few products, before or since, enjoy its instant name recognition.