The newest Legacy

Deliveries of the new Legacy 450 began in December 2015. The first few out the factory door came with an advertised max range of 2,300 nm. But a few prospects complained—they wanted to fly between more distant city pairs. Some wanted to be able to fly from California to Hawaii, where that 2,300 nm didn’t cut it.

So Embraer bumped the Legacy 450’s range to 2,900 nm, designating the current 450s Legacy 450ERs. The company did it the old-fashioned way: by increasing fuel capacity. By removing and rearranging a couple of wing ribs, the fuel tanks could be expanded to hold approximately 328 more gallons. Early Legacy 450s can have this upgrade performed via a service bulletin, with Embraer footing the bill. In any event, the Legacy 450 now has a max range very similar to that of the Latitude. And the Legacy 500, for that matter.

Cabin configuration and design

Do cabins sell airplanes? In this category, you better believe they do. After all, that’s where the customer sits. The Legacy 450 has a flat floor and a cabin that’s six feet high, more than six feet wide, and 24 feet long. Those are the same dimensions as the Legacy 500 cabin, except the 450 is 3.5 feet shorter. This gives the 450 a one-and-a-half-zone cabin, with club seating for four up front and two forward-facing seats at the cabin’s aft end.

If you go for a two-place, side-facing divan up front and that cherished belted potty seat, then max seating can go to nine passengers. But opting for the divan means there’s no room for the optional wet galley with convection and microwave ovens. Instead, you’ll have a more Spartan refreshment center. As for the potty, it’s an airline-style vacuum design—complete with external servicing.

BMW DesignworksUSA developed the interior concept in 2007. But a man-machine interface committee vetoed it after four- to five-hour test “flights” in a mockup revealed some shortcomings. The interior looked great, but the ergonomics were off. So the design work was brought in house, another partnership with BMW was formed, and Embraer came up with a new look. This included narrower valences; “floating” bulkheads; redesigned armrests; more comfortable, berthing leather seats (with optional lumbar adjustment, heat, and massage); sidewall pockets; and clever armrest stowage and entertainment control compartments with sliding covers. Now the interior has a better fit and feel, with a sleeker, more modern look.

As for entertainment, the Legacy 450 has a high-definition video system with surround sound, and it’s compatible with inputs from Apple devices. Up to two 17-inch and 20-inch bulkhead monitors can be ordered, as well as individual, nine-inch armrest-mounted screens. In-flight voice and text messaging are other options.

Fly by wire

There’s a 95-percent parts commonality between the Legacy 450 and the Legacy 500. That includes the cockpit, engines, and systems—which is the main reason that the two airplanes share a common type rating. If you’re signed off for the 450, you can fly a 500 with little extra fuss, and vice versa.

If there’s a headline for the marketing strategy behind the Legacy 450 and 500, it’s the fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system. With FBW, digital signals from the cockpit flight controls pass through data buses and on to flight control computers. From there, the signals are translated into digital control inputs to control surface actuators. In other words, there are no mechanical connections between the cockpit and the ailerons, elevator, rudder, or engines. The Legacy 450 and 500 are the “smallest” business jets to use fly by wire. You’d have to spend $50 million on a large-cabin, ultra-long-range jet to find the next FBW airplane up the food chain.

FBW has flight envelope protection and other flight control laws built into the computer logic. These laws prevent the airplane from stalling or overspeeding, and limit pitch to plus 30/minus 15 degrees and bank angles to 35 degrees. These are soft limits. If you really wanted to, say, roll the airplane, all you’d have to do is overpower the soft limits and hold in aileron pressure. (You’d still get an aural “bank angle” callout as you passed through 60 degrees, however.) Other benefits of FBW include coordinated flight at all times, automatic pitch and yaw compensation in turns, and automatic roll compensation in sideslips. In engine-out situations, FBW will automatically apply 80 percent of the necessary corrective roll and yaw adjustments to produce a near-perfect zero-sideslip condition. The remaining 20 percent must be provided by the pilot, part of Embraer’s philosophy of keeping pilots in the loop.

More laws make flying the airplane simpler and safer. Use the sidestick to move the primary flight display’s magenta flight path vector/flight director symbol inside the green flight path marker symbol, release the controls, and the Pro Line Fusion suite will command the airplane to maintain a desired flight path. It’s what could be called a “set-and-forget” method of flying. We may be accustomed to jinking an airplane this way and that in order to hold an altitude or heading, but FBW stays rock-solid on the desired path—even in turbulence.

The Legacy 450 and 500 have FBW sublaws for takeoff and landing. On the takeoff run, nosewheel steering is limited from 62 degrees of travel (at slow speeds) to three degrees (at high speeds). At 65 knots, the airplane goes into takeoff mode, which dampens pitch forces so there’s a smooth pitch capture after takeoff.

For landing, when you select gear down and landing flaps, FBW puts you in a trim control system (TCS) mode. The pilot can now retrim the airplane as it slows for landing. Simply press the sidestick’s TCS button and the airplane will trim to the airspeed at the time. As pitch forces change coming down final, you’ll feel the need to push or pull during the descent, but pressing TCS will trim out any forces associated with a new airspeed—like VREF—and give you conventional control feel for the landing. Incidentally, yaw/roll coupling is suppressed below 20 feet agl, allowing the pilot to apply conventional wing-down, opposite-rudder crosswind corrections.

After landing, a derotation mode kicks in, automatically lowering the nose to the runway at two degrees per second. Now it’s time to use the startlingly efficient brake-by-wire system to stop the ship. If the airplane is equipped with the optional autobrake system, set the braking force to “high,” keep your feet off the brakes, and let autobraking do the work. The result is a truly breathtaking, hang-in-the-straps experience. Just resist the urge to press on the brakes, because that will disengage autobraking.

So yes, FBW is all very nice, but you may ask about the chance it may somehow fail. Embraer says not to worry. There’s a one-in-a-billion chance of that ever happening, the company says. And even if it does, there’s a backup. The 450 and 500 FBW systems work under two sets of laws: normal and direct. The default law is normal, which provides all the features we’ve just discussed, and more. Should there be a flight control failure, direct mode automatically takes over, or can be selected manually. Now the airplane behaves conventionally, and without all the automated functions.

A lap in the practice area

AOPA Pilot’s flight in the Legacy 450 was out of the Embraer Executive Jet facility at Melbourne International Airport in Melbourne, Florida. First came an introduction to the Pro Line Fusion. Demonstration pilot Rich Brimer gave a tour of the Fusion’s center pedestal controls, where the flight plan page was called up. Then it was to submenus for setting up flight plans, entering weight and balance data, and selecting takeoff and landing conditions. Another page—VNAV thrust—is used to select airspeeds for each phase of flight. Our takeoff weight was 30,389 pounds, 6,940 of which was fuel. We were well under the max takeoff weight of 35,274 pounds, so at 20 degrees Celsius/68 degrees Fahrenheit (ISA +12 degrees C) the takeoff airspeeds came up as: V1, 113 KIAS; VR, 113 KIAS; V2, 120 KIAS; and VFS (final segment climb), 142 KIAS.

Taxiing the steer-by-wire 450 takes some practice before you become less jerky, but you sit up high so watching your progress is easy. After some final checks, and confirming that our trims and flaps were correct for takeoff by pressing a takeoff configuration button—“takeoff OK,” acknowledged the disembodied voice—the thrust levers were pushed halfway up. That’s when the autothrottles took over and pushed them all the way to the TO/GA position.

After a moment’s hesitation, all 13,080 pounds of thrust came out the back end of the airplane’s twin Honeywell HTF7500E engines, and we were blowing past 113 knots in no time flat. Then it was a 250-knot climb to 20,000 feet for some airwork off the Florida coast.

After leveling off, power was set to max cruise and our true airspeed settled down at 430 knots, with a fuel burn of 2,690 pph, or about 403 gph. If that fuel burn sounds outrageous, that’s because it is. For all but the shortest trips, the Legacy 450 would be flown at its maximum operating altitude of FL450. Up there, a typical high-speed cruise power setting would produce about 450 KTAS while burning a much more reasonable 1,450 pph, or about 215 gph. The rule of thumb for fuel burn is 2,100 pounds/314 gallons for the first hour of flight, and 1,400 pounds/209 gallons for the second and subsequent hours.

Perhaps most impressive was a high-angle-of-attack maneuver meant to simulate a last-minute response to impending controlled flight into terrain. Pulling the sidestick all the way back to the stop brought on both a “low airspeed” aural warning, as well as red PFD pitch limit indicator chevrons. We were on the threshold of a stall. But we also were at the airplane’s maximum available lift. The sidestick could have been held back like that all day, and the airplane still wouldn’t stall.

Overspeed protection also was explored. With the nose dumped, airspeed came up against the barber pole—but no more, thanks to FBW trimming against the overspeed, and autothrottles dialing power back to idle.

Back in the pattern, the drill is to slow to 180 KIAS about 15 nm from the airport, slow to 160 KIAS for flaps 1, and then power back to 140 KIAS for flaps 2. Gear down at a dot above the glideslope, go to flaps 3 or 4, and now you’re in TCS mode for final—assuming you’re hand-flying, in which case trimming is automatic and autothrottles will take care of speed adjustments. The Fusion calculated our VREF at 122 KIAS. (It also calculated our center of gravity, and sent the information along to the FBW for the proper trim settings.)

There was about 10 knots of crosswind component for the landing on Melbourne’s Runway 9R. Just for kicks, Brimer set the autobrakes to High. “You can land it in a crab,” he said. “It’ll straighten out. You’ll see.” The runway was coming up fast, and I didn’t have much time to think. No, wait. I did have time for a single thought, and it was this: There is no way in hell that I’m crab-slamming 29,000 pounds of $17 million jet on a runway doing 100 knots, and which will immediately be followed with the highest possible autobrake setting. An Ercoupe this is not.

So a little left wing low, a little right rudder, touchdown, feet off the pedals!, and we’re stopped in, oh, 1,500 feet or so.

The Legacy 450 is a joy to fly and offers the range, cabin, technology, and value that should appeal to those looking for truly big-airplane features in a jet meant to take typical passenger loads over typical routes. Ironically, its closest competition may just include the Legacy 500.

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SPEC SHEET
Embraer Legacy 450

Base price: $16.57 million

Specifications
Powerplants | 2 Honeywell HTF7500E, 6,540 lbst ea
TBO/Inspection intervals | On condition
Length | 64 ft 7 in
Height | 21 ft 1 in
Wingspan | 66 ft 5 in
Seats | 2 + 7/9
Cabin length | 24 ft
Cabin width | 6 ft 10 in
Cabin height | 6 ft
Basic operating weight | 22,928 lb
Max ramp weight | 35,406 lb
Max takeoff weight | 35,274 lb
Max zero fuel weight | 25,904 lb
Max payload | 2,976 lb
Payload w/full fuel | 1,627 lb
Max landing weight | 32,518 lb
Max usable fuel capacity | 10,851 lb (approx 1,627 gals)
Baggage capacity, forward cabinet | 88.18 lb, 5 cu ft
Baggage capacity, internal aft compartment | 330.69 lb, 35 cu ft
Baggage capacity, external tail compartment | 881.85 lb, 110 cu ft

Performance
Takeoff distance | 3,825 ft
Rate of climb, two engines | 3,866 fpm
Single-engine ROC | 996 fpm
Time to initial cruise altitude (43,000 ft) | 21 min
High speed cruise (4 pax, NBAA IFR reserves, 200-nm alternate)
Average cruise speed | 441 KTAS
Range | 2,483 nm
Long range cruise
Average cruise speed | 426 KTAS
Range | 2,575 nm
Max operating altitude | 45,000 ft
Pressurization differential | 9.6 psi
Sea-level cabin to | 26,520 ft
Cabin alt @ max operating altitude | 6,000 ft

Limiting and recommended airspeeds
V₁ (takeoff decision speed) | 110 KIAS
V_R (rotation) | 110 KIAS
V₂ (takeoff safety speed) | 117 KIAS
V_FE (max flap extended)
Flaps 1 | 210 KIAS
Flaps 2 | 185 KIAS
Flaps 3 | 185 KIAS
Flaps 4 | 170 KIAS
V_LE (max gear extended) | 250 KIAS
V_LO (max gear operating)
Extend | 250 KIAS
Retract | 250 KIAS
V_MO (max operating speed) | 320 KIAS
M_MO (max Mach number) | 0.83 M

For more information
Visit www.embraerexecutivejets.com

All specifications are based on manufacturer’s representations. All performance figures are based on standard atmosphere, sea level, maximum weight conditions unless otherwise noted.

Extra
The Legacy 450 uses the same engines as the Legacy 500, but its FADECs are set to produce 496 pounds less thrust at max takeoff power.