Embraer

Embraer builds business jets from three different starting points: regional airliners, a clean-sheet business platform, and its own light jet line.

Embraer was founded at São José dos Campos in 1969 and privatised in 1994. Its business jets do not descend from one ancestor. The first group is adapted from the company's airliners: the Legacy 600 and 650 from its regional jets, the Lineage 1000 from the E190. The second was drawn as a clean sheet for business aviation, the Legacy 450 and 500, with the Praetor line evolving directly out of it. The third is the Phenom family, intended from the outset as light business jets. Three starting points under one badge, and they were never meant to converge.

Ten aircraft carry the Embraer badge in this fleet, and the seating across them runs from four to fifty. That span is not something a single manufacturer usually has to cover, and it comes straight out of the three lineages: the airliner conversions carry the large numbers, the Phenom carries the small ones. Three are VIP Airliners, three Super Midsize, two Heavy Jets, one Light Jet, one Very Light Jet. Picking Embraer therefore settles very little on its own. The first useful question is size, and only after that does the lineage an aircraft came from start to matter.