Airbus partners with Aerion to develop supersonic business jet

Allan McArtor of Airbus North America and executives from Aerion held a joint news conference at Aerion’s exhibit at the National Business Aviation Association’s annual convention to talk about the partnership between the two companies.

Airbus and Aerion will work together to develop a multimillion-dollar supersonic business jet. They will collaborate on the jet’s development and exchange capabilities on the design and certification.

Airbus will provide technical and certification support.

McArtor, however, said Airbus likely won’t manufacture the supersonic jet.

But “I think we could certainly contribute to component manufacturing,” McArtor said.

The strategy is to get ahead for the future, he said of Airbus’ interest in supersonic travel.

“We don’t want to read” that someone else is doing it, he said. “It’s a first mover thing. There’s not going to be room for four supersonic business jets.”

Airbus doesn’t have a plan or a vision for supersonic commercial aircraft, he said.

He also talked a little about the Airbus engineering center in Wichita.

“We really like our Wichita facility,” McArtor said. “It’s doing great. They’re contributing on every program.”

The Wichita team is the “go to” team, he said.

It’s where Airbus turns when there’s a problem, he said.

Bombardier upgrades

Bombardier Aerospace announced that it’s offering a suite of upgrades for its Challenger 605 business jet.

The upgrades, which include advanced avionics, are for current owners. A price has not been determined.

Officials also announced that the company was adding six customer response team trucks in locations around the U.S. and a line maintenance station in Nice, France.

The trucks have dedicated technicians for business jets to provide unscheduled and scheduled maintenance for business aircraft, including troubleshooting, servicing and minor repairs.

Embraer display

Embraer is debuting the prototype of its Legacy 450 at the show, one of the seven airplanes it’s exhibiting on the static display.

The plane made its first flight on Dec. 28.

This story was originally published October 21, 2014 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Airbus partners with Aerion to develop supersonic business jet."