Professional Pilot, March 2016
ALEX REMEMBERS a personal memoir Attempts and difficulties in achieving British certification and sales for Learjets Although the Learjet was faster and less expensive to acquire and operate than the British built Hawker Siddeley HS125 R there was an uphill battle and zero copies of it were sold for a long time in the UK Seemingly in order to protect the British aircraft manufacturing industry the countrys CAA pointed out a number of mods the Learjet needed before it was to be awarded a British Airworthiness Certificate 46 PROFESSIONAL PILOT March 2016 L ong after the first Learjet received its FAA certification in the USA in 1964 finally in 1974 we achieved British certification for our aircraft Being in charge of international sales at Learjet I was not really urging this exercise because of the high cost estimated at 200000 and the fact that the English business jet market was completely dominated by the native de Havilland 125 later Hawker But then I was sometimes criticized for not having a dealer in the United Kingdom So I investigated the possibilities and settled on CSE in Oxford a large Piper distributor and pilot training school Principals at CSE were the Duke of Leinster still Lord Kildare at that time who was chairman President Rex Smith and Sales Mgr Lord Caryl Waterpark The company was owned by Guinness interests They accepted my proposal subject to landing a Learjet on the relatively short runway at Oxford I went to Oxford with Jim Bir our top demonstration pilot in a Learjet borrowed in Belgium Upon seeing the short runway at Oxford Jim said it would be a good opportunity to demonstrate a no flaps takeoff For non aviators a no flaps takeoff requires more runway than a normal takeoff with partial flaps and is used mostly on high altitude airports like Denver This demonstration sold the CSE executives on the capabilities of the Learjet Then came the question of British certification CSE could hardly be expected to sell uncertified airplanes in England so Learjet President Harry Combs had to approve the aircraft certification expense first which he did not L R Duke of Leinster chairman of the Learjet UK distributor CSE and Harry Combs president of Learjet Dennis Murrin member of the British Department of Civil Aviation headed the certification team that conducted the investigation leading to certification of the Learjet in the UK By Alex Kvassay Former salesman for Beech and Learjet
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