Range Rover

While the G550 has a maximum range 1,450 nautical miles greater than the G500, it has to slow to Mach 0.8 to achieve that range, while the G500 achieves best range at Mach 0.85. Flying at the same Mach 0.85, the G500 pushes a cabin three inches wider and two inches taller than the G550 through the air while burning 15 to 20 percent less fuel per hour. Even when flying at its high-speed cruise of Mach 0.9, the G500 burns 5 percent less fuel per hour than the G550 flying at Mach 0.85.

All was not smooth with the G500’s initial service. First in 2020, then again in 2022, two G500s experienced a loss of elevator authority during landing that resulted in touchdown hard enough to damage the aircraft. In response, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive (AD) imposing limitations designed to prevent similar events from occurring until the fly by wire (FBW) software was updated. Some were relatively easy to comply with—requiring autothrottles be engaged for approach and landing, for example. Critically, though, mandated wind restrictions were more difficult to comply with: The aircraft was prohibited from landing with wind gusts over 5 knots, or any wind (including gusts) over 15 knots.

As a result, many operators essentially halted operations for the roughly five-month period between the AD effective date and the availability of the FBW software update that removed the restrictions. Notably however, some operators were able to continue a busy tempo of operations through meticulous weather planning and operational flexibility to move flights times to windows of lower winds, even to the execution of long-range international trips. Fortunately, in almost two years since the FBW software was updated in 2022 there have been no further reported losses of elevator authority, and updated G500s are no longer subject to the AD’s restrictions.

In addition to the switch from conventional flight controls to a full FBW system, the G500 embraces other changes that modernize the venerable Gulfstream line so widely seen at general aviation airports around the world. Stepping into the cockpit, a pilot is struck by the sheer number of displays in the Honeywell-powered “Symmetry” flight deck—14 in total, 10 of which are touchscreens. The next impression is that of panels uncluttered by physical switches and buttons, as many of the most common system control actions are executed on one of the touchscreens.

Moving common system controls to virtual switches on the overhead panel touchscreens (OHPTs) means the switches can be configured as appropriate on power up or during system operation. For example, there’s no need to turn on or off fuel pumps during normal operations, as they will be “switched on” as needed for APU or engine start and shutdown. Similarly, the electronic checklist for normal operations is fully integrated into the aircraft systems, automatically checking off items the aircraft can autonomously verify. It’s common for a pilot to check off one item and then have the next four rapidly checked off by the airplane as it confirms the items are in their desired state. The steps the pilot must actually perform are few, as most of the few physical system switches that exist are left in their “normal” position for the entire flight.

A consequence of this system automation is a remarkably quick and easy startup. From walking into the cockpit of a “dark” airplane to having the APU running to provide full electrical power and bleed air for cabin cooling or warming takes under 90 seconds. Even with only one pilot on the flight deck performing all system checks, ATIS/clearance receipt, and FMS programming, the airplane is consistently ready for engine start in 13 to 14 minutes from “dark” cockpit.

Moving common operations from physical to virtual controls also means nearly every action a pilot would wish to take can be done through at least two interfaces. Receiving an ATC clearance “direct-to” a waypoint, the pilot can follow a traditional path of pulling up the flight plan page on the touch screen controller (TSC) the pilot has chosen to do flight management system (FMS) duty. Alternatively, without moving their hand from the cursor control device (CCD) which hosts the push-to-talk switch just used to communicate with ATC, the pilot can thumb a cursor to the waypoint on the large map display, and pull the trigger under their index finger three times: the first to pull up a menu for the waypoint, the second to select “direct to” (typically the first menu option presented), and the third to activate the selection after confirming the proposed flight plan modification drawn on the map is, in fact, desired. Besides often being quicker to execute, making small flight plan modifications directly on a display has the added benefit of requiring no “heads down” time with attention diverted from the primary screens.

The FMS is truly a flight management system, and not just the navigation management system as many devices wearing the label “FMS” more truly function. The FMS controls speed schedule of the autothrottles for climb, cruise, descent, and approach all the way to touchdown, as well as displaying in real time the optimal and maximum cruise altitude for the cruise profile selected by the pilot, taking into account current weight and outside temperature. With the push of a button the information can be switched to single engine cruise mode, making driftdown and diversion calculations following engine failure trivial. The integration of the head-up display (HUD) into operations is another evolutionary step of the Symmetry flightdeck. In addition to standard use of the HUD on approach and landing, from the first simulator session the HUD is used for takeoff and climbout as well. In addition to keeping the pilot’s eyes out of the flight deck during critical low-altitude operations, use of the HUD for takeoff and approach allows for remarkably accurate aircraft control. During my first “V1 cut” in initial training, I was so focused on maintaining rudder coordination and pitching to hold exactly V2 that I neglected to scan my heading bug for a few seconds. Glancing at the bug I was aghast to see it noticeably right of center—only to realize that the large visual depiction of the heading deviation only represented 2 degrees of actual change, so amplified is the HUD symbology.

This sensitivity makes it trivial to hand-fly a precision approach to minimums as constant small corrections are naturally cued and easily executed. Further, flying the approach, the lateral course of the localizer is not depicted in the HUD as a traditional CDI, but rather as a dashed extended runway centerline. Moving the HUD’s flight path marker slightly left or right of the centerline as needed to re-join final is as intuitive, natural, and smooth as making corrections on final during a visual approach.

A recent flight from Hanscom Field (BED) outside Boston to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is a representative case of a typical mid-range trip for a G500. With four passengers, bags, and generous fuel reserves, the airplane took off at a weight of 72,000 pounds, 8,000 pounds under its maximum weight. At that weight the runway required to depart the sea-level airport at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius was just under 5,000 feet, making coast-to-coast flights from small GA runways feasible. Despite the ISA+4 temperatures aloft, the aircraft climbed directly to 41,000 feet and, with a block altitude clearance from ATC, drifted up to 43,000 feet over the next 8 minutes, where we cruised for the remainder of the flight.

Broadly speaking, there are two “camps” of cruise speed selection in the G500. One camp operates at a cruise speed of Mach 0.87—slightly faster than the long-range cruise of Mach 0.85 while only burning 2 to 3 percent more fuel than long-range cruise. The other camp sees the aircraft’s high cruise speeds as one of its best attributes, and uses Mach 0.9 as normal cruise, accepting a 10 percent increase in fuel use in trade.

The Mach 0.9 operators end up flying short to medium legs between FL400 and FL450 to maintain the higher cruise speed. For the Mach 0.87 operators, flying just Mach 0.03 slower means the aircraft doesn’t need to stay in the relatively thick air at or below FL450; these operators will tend to drift up in altitude as fuel is burned, often finishing a flight at FL470 or FL490, where there is little competition for airspace. While the aircraft’s ceiling is an impressive 51,000 feet msl, in practice to operate there at Mach 0.87 the aircraft must weigh no more than 50,000 pounds—the typical landing weight with two passengers and minimal fuel reserves. Just 2,000 feet lower at 49,000 feet, in contrast, the airplane can easily maintain a Mach 0.87 cruise for the final three to four hours of flight.

A seemingly facile truth with a touch of subtlety is the extent to which more speed helps an airplane get where it’s going more quickly. Consider a coast-to-coast flight of 2,200 nautical miles in a 450-knot airplane versus a G500 flying at Mach 0.90 (roughly 520 knots depending on temperature aloft); in calm winds the G500 will get to its destination 40 minutes before the competitor. Now consider the same flight into a 100-knot headwind—the 450-knot airplane’s groundspeed of 350 knots means the aircraft will spend 29 percent longer in the air to get to its destination than it would in still air. Since 100 knots is a smaller percentage of the Gulfstream’s true airspeed, the G500 loses 5 percent less groundspeed, so not only is its absolute speed 70 knots faster, it beats the slower aircraft by even more time—over an hour before the 450-knot airplane.

On our coast-to-coast flight cruising at Mach 0.9, with a headwind starting at 190 knots decreasing to 60 knots as we progressed westward, the flight took only five hours and 20 minutes from taxi out to engine shutdown. Thanks to the pressurization system’s impressive 10.69 psi maximum differential we had a cabin altitude of only 3,700 feet for the trip, less than half of the more common 8,000-foot cabin altitude mid-sized jets flying at 43,000 feet would experience. While difficult to quantify, there is absolutely a noticeable effect on the body of the denser cabin air; I feel significantly more alert and less fatigued after multi-hour flights in the G500 than I do to flying for the same time with an 8,000-foot cabin altitude.

While many jets share a common type rating, the G500 and G600 are the most indistinguishable of common types I’ve yet experienced. The only physical difference in the cockpit between the two is the engraving under the engine run switches telling the pilots they are in a G500 or G600.

Behind the scenes, the FMS, of course, is loaded with the appropriate performance software for the model in question, but to the pilot the flight planning differences are transparent. One notable difference pilots will experience is that despite the larger size and heavier weight of the G600, the proportionally longer wing allows for lower landing speeds than a G500—a G600 at maximum landing weight has a VREF of 128 knots, 4 knots lower than the 132 knots VREF of a G500 at its maximum landing weight. This despite the G600 landing 12,500 pounds heavier.

Even the faster G500 doesn’t require much runway for landing, however—at maximum landing weight, sea level, and ISA conditions, the combination of automatic spoilers and braking result in a landing distance under 3,200 feet, remarkably short runway for an airplane capable of carrying up to 19 passengers thousands of miles at 90 percent of the speed of sound.

Neil Singer is a corporate pilot, designated examiner, and instructor in Embraer Phenoms and Cessna Citations. He has more than 10,000 hours of flight time with more than 20 years of
experience as an active instructor.