At the time, many of the country's biggest businesses flew slow WW2 surplus aircraft like the Douglas DC-3, B 26, or Beech Model 18. These twin engine propeller airplanes were roomy but slow, plodding along at around 200 mph.
Lear knew that companies making business aircraft, Cessna and Beechcraft, couldn’t keep up with the new Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, which fly at 550 mph, and would fall behind, literally and figuratively.
"If you guys don't do it, I'm going to do it," Lear told aerospace leaders in Wichita, the home of Cessna, Beechcraft and many other aviation heavyweights.
Lear had a long history of innovation. Beyond his work on the first car radio in the late 1920s — he and Paul Galvin created the name "Motorola" for the new product — Lear also developed early autopilot systems, radio direction finders in the 1930s, and he invented the 8-track cassette player in 1964.
Eager to get started with his private jet idea, Lear bought an airplane factory in Switzerland, had everything packed up and moved to Wichita because "Can you think of any place where I can steal more engineers?"
Lear wanted to build a jet that could cruise at about 530 miles per hour and fly at 41,000 feet. This would make it nearly as fast as the new jetliners, and fly even higher. He wanted the airplane to be relatively simple to fly, making it possible for civilian pilots with little or no jet experience to transition into the new hot rod airplane with a reasonable amount of training.
Everything was going well, and Lear saw his plane make its first flight on Oct. 7, 1963. Then came that fateful day in 1964, when the prototype took off on a flight to test single engine performance. It was an anxious time for Lear, because by that time he was running perilously low on money. The first Lear Jet ever built crashed. But then, the miracle.
"He had it insured for $500,000."
"They took off with the spoilers up, and an engine shut down," Lacy says. The spoilers are meant to slow the airplane when it's time to descend, and it is nearly impossible to take off if they are left up. The guy in the captain’s seat was a Federal Aviation Administration pilot. He and the Lear pilot sitting next to him had neglected to put the spoilers down for takeoff.
The airplane wallowed into the air, and the pilots realized something was wrong. They tried, and failed, to get the second engine started. Neither of them noticed the spoilers. The airplane didn’t get much more than 10 or 20 feet into the air and eventually settled back down into the field, where a wing tank ruptured and it caught fire. Nobody was hurt in the accident.
With the FAA at the controls, there was no suspicion of insurance fraud. Even better, Lear was able to make some calls to well-placed friends in Washington. “The FAA wrecked my airplane," he told them. The FAA soon assigned enough people to speed along the certification program, and Lear was handed a type certificate for his new jet just two months after the accident
Lacy and Lear would become close friends early on. Lacy was a United Airlines pilot who sold airplanes on the side, owned a P 51, and flew F 86s in the California Air National Guard. He convinced his boss at the airplane dealership, Allen Paulson – who would one day own business jet maker Gulfstream – that they should sign on as a distributor.
Anyone who wanted to travel fast and travel in style bought one. Lacy and Allen’s west coast Lear Jet dealership outsold every other dealer in the country. Frank Sinatra bought one. Danny Kaye was another customer, and soon became a partner in the Lear Jet dealership.
Big businesses like Boise Cascade and Rexall Drugs bought Lear Jets, Rexall bought their 2nd in 1965. Anyone who wanted to travel fast and travel in style bought one.
Lacy, based at the Van Nuys airport just north of Los Angeles was the secret to the marketing strategy. Lear and Lacy were sitting at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel when Lear pulled out the Beverly Hills phone book.
It cost $135 an hour to fly the Lear Jet, and Lear handed Lacy the phone book. "Call anybody you think will talk about the Lear, take them for a flight," he said. "I'll pay you $185 an hour to cover it."
"We flew a lot of people," Lacy says. "One of the reasons for flying people in Hollywood, whether they were going to buy it or not, was to get them talking about it. It became a household name."
The plan worked. Within a few years, the Lear Jet name had become part of popular culture.
By the late 1960s, Lear had sold his company to the Gates Rubber Company
Great history. Thanks.
ReplyDelete