Fast Winglets, Very Fast

Aviation Partners has been very busy. The Seattle company has upgraded 80 Gulfstream IIs with its Blended Winglets, and says the modification has shown a comparable 6% to 7% performance improvement on the Boeing BBJ.

The company's next target is supersonic business jets.

Winglets will make future SSBJs more practical, maintains Bernie Gratzer, chief aerodynamicist at Aviation Partners and former member of the SST design team at Boeing.

"You can always throw something together that will achieve supersonic speed, but it may not necessarily stand the test of the marketplace," Gratzer said. "A practical SSBJ must also be efficient subsonically, with good slow-speed handling qualities and short-field performance."

"There is a great deal of interest these days in first-generation supersonic business jets, says Aviation Partners CEO Joe Clark. "Blended wing technology will still be effective on new-generation SSBJs. We'd like to see this technology designed into supersonic transports while they are still on the drawing boards."

Clark said his winglet technology can be adapted to virtually any aircraft. He envisions using the technology across the board, whether for a new design or as a retrofit.

Aviation Partners has a GII with Blended Winglets at the McCarran static display.