On the Record With
Bryan Moss, President, Gulfstream Aerospace
Gulfstream looks set for another banner year and already has
orders in hand for most of next year's production.
"The market is telling us that in most cases we have the
right product mix," says Gulfstream president Bryan Moss, who three years ago
introduced the strategy to offer families of aircraft with capabilities matched
to their price points, from the top-of-the-line G550 to the small G100.
The pace has been meteoric. This year alone saw entry into
service of the G350 and G450 as well as first flight of the G150 model that was
introduced at last year's NBAA.
The G150 will offer all the performance of the G100 and be
able to fly four passengers 2,700 nmi—that's one-stop service from Paris to
most U.S. cities. Meanwhile, metal is being cut on the 100th production G550,
and Gulfstream announced it plans to build a research and development center
for 750 engineers in Savannah, Gerogia.
But this won't be a Skunk Works for Gulfstream. Rather, it
is the consolidation of engineering from locations scattered around the
Savannah plant—much of the work there will be "factory" R&D of model
refinements and development; new avionics such as synthetic vision; and
engineering the fit of equipment into special missions aircraft. It is, says
Moss, a cry for sufficiency and not a signal that R&D has taken on a new
significance.
Orders at Gulfstream have exceeded deliveries for the last
five quarters, and the company has a healthy backlog (especially from NetJets).
Deliveries in the first nine months of this year totaled 46 large aircraft
G350-size and up (vs. 41 in the same period of 2004) and 19 G100 and G200
midsize jets, up from 16. Moss's challenge is to keep the sales momentum going,
and to strive for further cost-efficiencies. "From the standpoints of [parent]
General Dynamics and Wall Street, how we perform and how we execute will be
extremely important."
