Bombardier Sees Blended-wing Future for Business Jets

The return of EBACE as an in-person event after a three-year pandemic-induced hiatus gave Bombardier the opportunity to fully provide the European market with its vision of the future for the first time as a pure-play business aviation company. The Canadian aircraft manufacturer did so by unveiling a medium-term program—a Mach 0.94 Global 8000 that ups the ante on the ultra-long-range sector—and revealing a blended-wing concept airplane that could reshape its future line of aircraft, making them more efficient and sustainable.

Bombardier became a pure-play company last year after spinning off the remnants of its non-business aviation units. At the time, Eric Martel, president and CEO of the company, had outlined a five-year plan to turn around the debt-laden company, including a decision to keep down research and development (R&D) expenses.

Bombardier had just refreshed its Global lines with the 5500 and 6500 and was working through its ramp-up of the Global 7500, Martel explained. But now, with a stronger financial footing and the recent handing over of the 100^th Global 7500, the time was ripe for Bombardier to reveal the next projects that it had been quietly working on within its existing research and development budgets.

The reveals also came as the manufacturer's rivals had rolled out the new entrants in the ultra-long-range niche over the past year, creating an increasingly competitive field.

Bombardier’s answer is the Global 8000, which will be the fastest (Mach 0.94) and longest-range (8,000 nm) purpose-built business jet. Taking the wraps off during a launch event on Monday morning at EBACE in Geneva, Martel, said the decision to launch the aircraft was taken following customer engagement. “We listened to the customer. They’re very satisfied with the 7500 but they want more range and more speed. The time is right.”

A development aircraft flew supersonically last year, marking the first time that a civil jet has officially passed through the sound barrier since the days of the Concorde. It was also the first time any transport aircraft had achieved Mach 1 using sustainable aviation fuel. Martel noted, “Bombardier is never complacent with its portfolio. We are always advancing,” but ruled out any current plans to develop a supersonic business jet.

Bombardier (has been discussing the Global 8000 for some time and now development has gathered pace, with an aim of getting the aircraft into service in 2025. The type is intended to replace the 7500, upon which it is closely based, but there will be a period of crossover on the production line.

Flight testing is being accomplished using one of the Global 7500 flight-test vehicles. On May 18, 2021, FTV-5 (C-GLBG) repeatedly achieved supersonic speed in shallow dives, reaching Mach 1.015. The flight was conducted from Santa Maria in California with a NASA F/A-18 Hornet fighter acting as a chase plane. The supersonic trial was undertaken as part of a campaign to validate the Global 8000 for an Mmo of Mach 0.94—up from 0.925 on the Global 7500.

In terms of range, Bombardier is targeting 8,000 nm for the 8000 versus the 7500’s 7,700 nm. This opens up a number of new city-pairs, including Dubai-Houston, Singapore-Los Angeles, and London-Perth. While the 7500 can make similar long-distance flights in the right conditions, Bombardier’s “no compromise” approach to development will mean that the 8000 has that range consistently available, without a customer having to potentially wait for favorable en-route winds in order to safely make the trip.

When initially talking about the Global 8000, Bombardier envisioned that the aircraft would be a version of the 7500 with length shortened by around eight feet and three cabin zones. During development of the 7500, it became apparent that the type’s transonic wing and aerodynamics would support further speed and range advances without compromise on fuselage length. As a result, the 8000 features the full-length fuselage and, most importantly, offers the same four-zone cabin as the 7500. This is especially important on long-haul flights, when one of the zones can accommodate additional crew members while still leaving three available for passenger accommodation.

While there are relatively few changes from the 7500, there are software modifications and some tweaks applied to the GE Aviation Passport engines. The range improvements come largely from an optimization of the empty weight and the resultant ability to carry more fuel in the existing tanks.

Bombardier said the list price of the Global 8000 is $78 million, up from $75 million for the 7500. It will feature modern cabin technology and comfort, including a 2,900-foot cabin altitude and the company’s own Pür Air and HEPA filter technology.

Other cabin features inherited from the 7500 include the Soleil circadian lighting system and Nuage “zero-gravity” seats, with a number of configurations for the four-cabin zones, one of which is a principal suite with a full-size bed and stand-up shower. For the flight crew, the aircraft will be fitted with the Bombardier Vision flight deck.

The launch of the Global 8000 is also good news for customers of the 7500, whether their aircraft have been delivered or are still on order. When the 8000 enters service, an optional service bulletin will be issued for the 7500, allowing it to be retrofitted with the 8000's performance enhancements if the customer so desires. The downtime needed for the retrofit is expected to be less than a week.

A Blended Future for Sustainability

While Martel has often discounted potential supersonic entrants—at least in the current regulatory environment—he stressed that most of Bombardier’s R&D funding was dedicated to projects involving sustainability. And also during EBACE, Bombardier offered a glimpse at what it thinks could be the future of business jets: a blended-wing body design that forms a key part of its new Eco Jet sustainability initiative. The Canadian airframer revealed a small-scale model it has been using for extensive flight and wind-tunnel testing as it seeks to refine the technology it views as integral to its long-term product strategy.

In the shorter term, the company is also employing this model as a testbed for improvements that could be introduced more incrementally to existing aircraft.

While details of the development are still very much in the works or under wraps, Benoit Breault, Bombardier’s director of research and technology, told AIN that the blended-wing concept is “a key part of our strategic thinking.” The company’s engineering brain-trust sees the aerodynamic improvements promised by the new wing as being one of three pillars to support its ambitions to reduce business aviation's carbon emissions. Switching to using sustainable aviation fuel and adopting new propulsion systems such as hydrogen, hybrid-electric, and all-electric power sources round out the other two pillars.

For now, Bombardier remains agnostic about what direction it might take for the propulsion system of a next-generation business jet. Breault indicated that the company is already in talks with several leading engine manufacturers about how the blended-wing architecture might accommodate next-generation propulsion systems.

“Our approach has been to think about what our portfolio of products should and could look like 30 years from now, and then backtrack to determine what technologies we need to achieve that, with a carte blanche in terms of options to be considered,” Breault explained.

His strategic technologies office is advancing a diverse portfolio of research programs, tasked with ensuring that the Canadian airframer can achieve the technology readiness levels required to progress. In concert with that, a conceptual design team looking at what the aircraft of the future could look like.

“Some of the work is at the concept stage, but in other cases, it is in a development timeline that could lead to technology finding its way onto other [existing] aircraft programs,” Breault said. “We have to deliver technology for the short, mid, and long terms, and try to strike a balance from an investment point of view so that we are feeding the short- and medium-term objectives.”

The Bombardier team, which Breault said has deep expertise in aerodynamics, began its work on the blended-wing concept more than a decade ago when a couple of engineers started projecting future needs and possibilities. With one eye on existing military aviation interest in blended wings, they also launched research programs with several key universities.

At this point, the company believes the work is somewhere between technology readiness levels (TRL) 3 and 4, with some initial wind-tunnel testing successfully completed and work protected under patents. A scale model, at just 7 percent of the size of Bombardier’s Global family of long-range aircraft, has been flying for the past three years in secret in Quebec.

The company is now building a model that will be around twice the size of the unit on display at EBACE and expects to start flying it at the same remote location in Quebec over the next six to 12 months. “This will give us greater precision in our data collection,” Breault explained, adding that the work should get Bombardier closer to its aim of achieving TRL 6. A TRL 6 technology has a fully functional prototype or representational model, while the ultimate goal is TRL 9, indicating a technology is "flight-proven."

In this next phase of work, Bombardier also plans to further explore possible designs for future business aircraft. It will also advance its evaluation of new propulsion systems, which could include hybrid-electric and distributed electric technology.

Building on early work with the blended-wing architecture, the company will also step up work on new avenues for aerodynamic improvements. Breault said this will include novel boundary layer injection techniques to reduce drag in the tail section by slowing down the boundary layer of air along the airframe. “If we can re-energize this speed to one that matches the speed of the aircraft, we will reduce the drag in a way that is very novel for business aircraft,” he said.

Bombardier’s reasoning for taking a multifaceted approach to driving down business aviation's carbon emissions is to do everything possible to ensure that this special mode of transportation maintains its advantages for end-users as it gets greener.

“We believe passengers will have to make some compromises to fly sustainably,” Breault told AIN. “For example, using hydrogen fuel [for direct propulsion in engines] could need enormous cryogenic tanks, but passengers probably won’t want to compromise on the size and comfort of their cabins. What brought us to the Global 7500 were [the goals of flying] farther, faster, smoother and more connected, but we believe we can achieve both passenger comfort and social and environmental responsibility.”

Part of Bombardier’s focus for work aimed at short- and mid-term applications is on the electrification of existing aircraft subsystems. For instance, it is evaluating possibilities such as using hydrogen fuel cells to replace the ram air turbines that provide emergency power in the event of an engine failure.

The company is also looking to introduce digital-twin technology that creates an exact replication of systems, using updated real-time data, and using simulation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to support decision-making. Breault said this approach has already been adopted for health monitoring for the Global 7500 and is now set to be expanded for other Bombardier aircraft and engine data.

“It is too early to say for sure that technology like the blended wing is definitely future [of business aircraft] but we are positive that we can mature it,” Breault concluded, while acknowledging the risks entailed.