![]() The first executive aircraft designed on a computer, the comfortable, efficient, and economical 10-passenger jet, powered by two CFE738-1-1B turbofans, boasted a transcontinental range of about 3,000 nm with eight passengers at Mach 0.80. In the 1990s, having met long-range-market needs, Dassault shortened the 900’s fuselage while retaining the advances introduced in the series to create the shorter-range Falcon 2000 twinjet, which first flew in 1993. Later derivatives include the 900B/C 900EX EASy (Enhanced Avionics System), featuring a Honeywell Primus Epic all-glass flight deck with synthetic vision and 900LX, the current production model, with three Honeywell TFE371-60 engines, high-Mach blended winglets, and a 4,750-nm range. In addition, the cockpit featured digital avionics and composite materials were employed in every application possible, saving significant weight. A clean-sheet, 12- to 14-passenger trijet, it offered a 4,000-nm range and a wider, longer fuselage than on the Falcon20/50 models.Īmong the program’s innovations were design and manufacturing processes that incorporated the Dassault Systemes CATIA computer-aided design technology, allowing engineers to fine-tune and produce its structural and aerodynamic features with outstanding accuracy. The 1980s brought demand for true intercontinental-range aircraft, and Dassault answered with the Falcon 900, introduced at the 1983 Paris Air Show. The Falcon 50 itself was upgraded to the 50EX in the mid-1990s and remained in production until 2007. The Falcon 20, for example, begat the Falcon 200 and smaller Falcon10/100, among other derivatives. While new models have been in constant development throughout the Falcons’ history, so have updates to in-production aircraft. The first civil aircraft to incorporate supercritical wings, the Falcon 50 featured a revolutionary airfoil that improved transonic performance and high-lift characteristics, providing better handling in high-speed flight, as well as superior short and hot-and-high field capability. Typically configured for eight to 10 passengers in a two-zone cabin, with a top speed of Mach 0.86 and range of some 3,400 nm with IFR reserves, the Falcon 50 could cross the North Atlantic or the continental U.S. ![]() in the early 1970s for a longer-range aircraft, Dassault stretched the Falcon 20 airframe and developed the Falcon 50 trijet, which first flew in 1976, powered by three Garrett TFE731-3 engines. Federal Express (now FedEx) also chose the Falcon 20 to launch its overnight package delivery service in 1973. Surely, Dassault must have been pleased when Lindbergh himself birthed the business aircraft family following the1963 debut flight with an order on the airline’s behalf for the first tranche of 160 copies of what would be renamed, in 1966, the Falcon 20. Serge Dassault oversaw the birth of the Falcons. Concurrently, U.S.-based Pan American Airways was quietly planning an executive aviation division and seeking the right aircraft to inaugurate service. His son, Serge Dassault (later company president and chairman), came to the NBAA Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the following year bearing photos of the wooden mockup of a proposed business jet and reported receiving an “encouraging” response. In 1961, as head of the eponymous military and commercial aircraft manufacturer he’d formed after the war, Dassault approved the development of the Mystère 20, which was based on the company’s transonic Dassault Mystère IV fighter-bomber and powered by a pair of rear-mounted Pratt & Whitney JT12A-8 turbojet engines (changed to General Electric CF700 turbofans for the production model). ![]() Interned in Buchenwald during World War II for refusing to collaborate on aircraft production under the Nazi-occupation government, Marcel adopted the surname Dassault-the nom de guerre of his elder brother, who served in the French Resistance-after his liberation from the concentration camp. The Falcon family’s patriarch, aircraft designer Marcel Bloch, born in 1892, was among the welcoming throng at Paris Le Bourget Airport when Charles Lindbergh concluded his nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927. More than 2,700 Falcons have been delivered worldwide. Every decade since, Paris-based Dassault (Booth Z72, Static AD_02) has introduced a new Falcon, each raising the bar for performance, comfort, and efficiency. May 4 marks the 60th anniversary of the inaugural flight of the Mystère 20, Dassault Aviation’s first business jet and the first member of what would become the Falcon jet family. ![]()
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