Raytheon's Premier I Rolls Out in Wichita;
Composite Design Departs from Line-Up

Raytheon Aircraft's first original aircraft, the Premier I, was rolled out in Wichita, Kansas, exactly two months ago, accompanied by more than 500 of the 750 Premier I team members. About 300 guests, customers and reporters watched the first production Premier I, one of four production test aircraft, emerge from behind a red, white and blue curtain on the south side of Raytheon's Plant Three facility at Beech field.

Raytheon Aircraft's current business jet line consisting of the Beechjet 400A (formerly the Mitsubishi Diamond II) and the Hawker 800XP, a highly evolved variant of the 35-year-old Hawker-Siddeley business aircraft design, will be joined by Premier I when it's certified in the third quarter of 1999.

The $4.3-million, eight-seat, 1,500-nmi range Premier I is radical departure from those designs. It has a mid-size business aircraft cabin cross section, light jet takeoff field performance, a top cruising speed of 460 kt and the lowest projected operating costs of any twin turbofan business aircraft including the Cessna CE525 CitationJet, according to Raytheon Aircraft officials. Its two-piece, carbon-fiber and Nomex honeycomb sandwich fuselage is built for the most part by a computer-controlled machine, making possible a five-day construction cycle that includes eight hours of autoclave curing.

The 20-degree sweep, super-critical flow aluminum wings, seat rails, forward pressure bulkhead and most other metal parts are fabricated by computer-controlled, high-speed milling machines that slash both parts count and required assembly hours. As a result, Premier I will have one-half the parts count of a Beechjet 400A and thus be much less expensive to manufacture.

Raytheon officials claim more than 120 sales for the Premier I. The innovative light jet, while being more than a year overdue because of a wing enlargement, will be fully certified when customer deliveries begin next year at this time, including approvals for flight into known icing, virtually every option and even the FlightSafety International Level B simulator certification.

By Fred George