Bombardier

Bombardier Inc. builds business jets in Montreal, and three of its families fly with Private Jet Royalty: Challenger, Global and the Learjet line.

Bombardier began at Valcourt, Quebec in 1942 building snow vehicles, and arrived in aviation by acquisition: Canadair in 1986, Learjet in 1990. It is headquartered in Montreal, and its business-jet output has never been organised as a single ladder. Challenger and Global are separate programmes, developed for different distances and built around different cabin cross-sections; Learjet manufacture ended in 2021 after six decades. The families are the unit of meaning here. They are not generations of one aeroplane, and knowing which family an aircraft belongs to tells you more about it than knowing its model number does.

Fourteen Bombardier aircraft fly with Private Jet Royalty, and the three families spread across five categories unevenly. The five Challengers hold Heavy Jet and reach down into Super Midsize. The five Learjets hold Light Jet and reach up into Midsize. The four Globals sit inside Ultra Long Range and appear nowhere else. Two families cross a category boundary, one does not, and that is how three families come to cover five categories. Two of the fourteen aircraft remain in production; the rest, every Learjet among them, are out of production and still flying.