An old Swedish buddy is chief pilot at a company that owns this SE-registered Bombardier Global XRS. It divides its time between the US and Sweden (it's mainly servicing one single client, a huge game developer guy). He invited me and my boy over to come see it at VNY, which we of course jumped at! Although he couldn't be there due to crew visa issue problems, his main XRS captain John was there to show us around.
I don't know who was more excited, me or my boy!
The XRS is the precursor to the Global Express 6000 and basically the same plane. Its current iteration is the 6500 and the newest in the line is the new Global 7500, which is the longest range biz jet in the world, beating the G650ER even.
I wasn't allowed to take any photos inside, but they told me the interior was redone just a few years ago. I believed them - it looked amazing. White leather seats and with a very modern feel. They recline and swivel any which way you can imagine. Cabin is full standup, but you probably don't want to be any taller than 6ft. It's got a crew rest area, 14 seats, a bedroom and two toilets. Baggage area was accessible from cabin and in the very back. Actually slightly surprised at how small the luggage area was, I wouldn't say it's much larger than maybe a PC12's or a Caravan's.
My lil boy kept jumping between the seats and I was so paranoid his dirty shoes were gonna smudge the white leather, so I never go to sit down in cockpit and nerd out completely. But I did chat quite a bit with John, the captain. Said the thing burns about 3000lbs/hr at cruise up high and it has no problem doing LA to Stockholm direct in any kind of mad headwind. Certified to FL510, but he's only been up to FL470 with it. Say it can't really get up there with any kind of payload. Honeywell Primus avionics. He powered up the APU so we could operate all the interior lighting and see the screens. Funny thing is how as the screens came up, many had red X's on them and John was sighing: "These things need to be flown. If they sit too long, there's always some %#$@ that stops working". Haha, sounds familiar. Not just my clown planes, then.
My boy got to shut the APU down at the end and that made him very excited pushing that knob.
Fun to see how the other half lives! I asked the captain how he liked flying it and he said "it's great, but I'd rather sit in the back and have someone else fly it if could do it over again!".
Haha. Fun day!
