Bombardier’s 7,700-nm Global 7500 has reached a new plateau: the 200th delivery to a customer. The airframer announced the milestone this morning, a marker reached just six years after the jet entered service in 2018.

Since its entry into service, the Global 7500 fleet has amassed 200,000 hours and logged a dispatch reliability of more than 99.8%. And as the fleet has grown, so too have the speed records for the Mach 0.925, four-zone model.

The Canadian manufacturer noted that the aircraft has accrued some 75 such city-pair records, and more are coming, according to David Strassburg, Bombardier demonstration pilot and safety manager for demo flight operations. “We're actually at more than that. So we're really doing quite well.”

These include an 8,225-nm flight in October 2019 from Sydney, Australia, to Detroit, Michigan, the longest flight ever recorded in business aviation, the company maintained. Some of the newer missions included Miami to São Paulo, Tokyo to Los Angeles, Jeddah to London, and Los Angeles to Auckland.

However, most of these records were established in roughly the past 18 months, once Bombardier had fully ramped up production on the model, according to Strassburg.

“There was an early phase where there were a couple of records that were set, and then a lot of the focus was really on producing the aircraft, trying to support them, and making sure that we got them out there to customers,” he noted.

While the aircraft was flying at record performance, “there was a rather large gap of several years where we really weren't taking the time to document that and show that we had the performance for the aircraft,” he said. Now, “we got the paperwork dialed in and understand what’s involved.”

In fact, all but three of the records have occurred in the past year and a half. Strassburg discussed the complicated process of documenting the record, beginning with the country of origin of the pilots and then ultimately feeding up to global organizations such as the Swiss Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

He stressed that these records were obtained during the aircraft’s normal course of business. “These are not experimental aircraft that are just available to fly around. We have customers that want to see them, we have salesmen that want to see them. So, the records are dictated by the needs of the aircraft,” he said. “There hasn't been a single one of the records that we set that was done specifically for the purpose of setting a record.”

Many of them were done on demo flights from one city to another, providing the ability to demonstrate speed and the quality of the flight in the aircraft to potential buyers.

“That's been really satisfying to do that. This is the reason they’re buying aircraft is because they want to go places,” he said. “We were showing them that we can demonstrate world-class record-setting performance in the end-case scenario that you want to use this aircraft.”

This is important, Strassburg said, because “We can show people the performance in the literature and the marketing materials and we've demonstrated to the certification authorities. But we wanted to display it in a way that was really meaningful to the people that are going to use the aircraft.”

As more Globals entered the market, momentum has gained, even among the customers, Strassburg said. This coincided with the industry emerging from Covid and demand for use of the aircraft went up as people wanted to go places. 

“We even had two operators that took delivery of the aircraft and set world record flights on their first flight in the aircraft with our support,” he said. “The pride that they have when they do that is really cool.”

Some have set multiple records, Strassburg continued. “We're learning what it takes to perform, [and to] get our aircraft to get every possible drop of performance we can out of them,” he said.

But, noting his role as safety manager, he said those customers have collaborated closely with Bombardier on the flights. Many times, customers that were on the record flight didn't know until they landed, Strassburg said, citing as an example a flight from Phoenix to Paris. “They couldn't believe how fast they got there, and then when we told them what they had done, they were just absolutely ecstatic.”

On display during the MEBAA show this week, the Global 7500 has had success in the Middle Eastern market, he noted, and along with that “many records in that region.” This included one set on a customer delivery flight into the region, Strassburg added.

“There are some unique challenges obviously with the instability and the restrictions in that region where you have to fly much longer routes than perhaps you would have had to do under different political circumstances. This makes the performance even more important,” he said. “You can’t take the shortest distance between two points anymore. You have other factors that you're dealing with. So, if you have a proven performer and you can make up some of that time, it mitigates some of the challenges.”

Noting that he is a newer member of the Global team, he said, “I'm here with people that were involved in certification and flying it from its very early days, setting some speed records back when the aircraft was first initially certified. But to see the excitement in them with the thousands of hours they have on the airframe and all the time that they spend on it is super, super satisfying.”

As the records rack up, Bombardier is flight-testing the follow-on model, the even speedier Global 8000, which has crossed the supersonic boundary. The Mach 0.94 model, capable of flying up to 8,000 nm, is expected to enter service in 2025. However, those with 7500s already on hand will have the option of retrofitting a software upgrade that will give their aircraft even better performance.