Gulfstream

Gulfstream Aerospace has designed, built and finished its jets in Savannah, Georgia, since 1967, and has belonged to General Dynamics since 1999.

Gulfstream Aerospace dates its line to 1958 and the first flight of the Gulfstream I. Since 1967 it has been based at Savannah, Georgia, where the aircraft are designed, built and fitted out on one site, and since 1999 it has been part of General Dynamics. For most of that time the company has stayed with large-cabin, long-range aeroplanes instead of working across the full width of the market. The range reflects it: its members resemble one another closely, reading as successive answers to the same question about distance and cabin volume.

Seven Gulfstreams are available here, across Midsize, Super Midsize, Heavy and Ultra Long Range. Range runs from 2,988 nautical miles at the shortest to 7,000 at the longest, and the first of those figures carries the more useful information. No Gulfstream in this fleet is a short-sector aeroplane, and nothing sits beneath the four categories listed — no light jet, no very light jet, no turboprop. Two of the seven remain in production. For anyone choosing by brand, that floor is the practical consequence: the question stops being whether the aircraft reaches the destination and becomes which cabin to put on the sector.