By IANS
Mumbai : US-based Aerion Corp, which is developing a supersonic business jet (SSBJ), has received pre-delivery orders from five Indian customers for the aircraft, said the company’s sales representative, Execujet Aviation Group, Tuesday.
However, Zurich-based Execujet, which would distribute the SSBJ outside North America, refused to divulge the names of the customers in India. Aerion has also received one letter of intent from a Pakistani customer.
According to Execujet executive director Peter Smales, the carrier would have an estimated launch price tag of $80 million (Rs.3.2 billion) each and deliveries are scheduled to begin from the last quarter of 2014.
“We are delighted to have secured our first sales here. India has exciting growth markets for business aviation,” said Smales.
According to him, a Mumbai-Singapore trip would normally take around five hours where as SSBJ would take only three hours.
“There is a lot of logic in having a supersonic business jet product in India with the young generation of wealthy entrepreneurs building global empires,” he added.
The plane is designed to cruise at a speed up to 1.15 times the speed of sound overland in India without producing a sonic boom and can speed up to 1.6 times the speed of sound in other unrestricted countries, Smales said.
It would seat 8-12 passengers and have a range in excess of 4,000 nautical miles. The orders are part of 40 pre-delivery orders received by Aerion worldwide, Smales said.