I have owned two GV’s and for the last year I have owned a Global Express. The GV is a super reliable airplane. No doubt about it. But the comfort of the Global is hands down superior by a long way. If you are in the airplane for 5 to 12 hours per flight. The Global is quieter, rides smoother (nice flexible wing), is roomier and the temperature control is much better as well. This is true of the front and back of the airplane. My captain (he has been with me over 4 airplanes now) commented that he didn’t know he needed feet warmers until he flew the Global and now he doesn’t ever want to go back to an airplane without them. As to reliability. My experience is that you need to have a crew that understands the systems in the Global. It is more automated than the GV. And the issue is not that it is less reliable - it is a lot of crews do not understand the systems well and it causes trouble for the airplane. If your crew knows the systems, it will fly very reliably without issue. There are a lot of avionics computers in the Global. One time we had a no start due to the avionics. The crew just hopped into the avionics bay and re-racked a computer. Everything came online. Took 20 minutes. Other than that, the plane has never failed, because the crew knows it well. All planes break. I was flying out of São Paulo in my last GV and the gear wouldn’t retract. We returned and it took 8 days to get the replacement valve from Gulfstream. Was the only tech AOG we ever had on either GV. But it does happen. It’s just rare. And it is rare on either airplane. They are both very good machines. When I upgrade next, will likely go to the Global 6000. But we just did the paint, full avionics, interior, CMS and the 240 plus gear on this one. So will fly it for a while before jumping to a newer airframe. Love the content on this channel by the way.
Customer Support has been Bombardier’s biggest downfall over the past 25 years. They were #1 in ProPilot’s surveys during the 1990s and have steadily declined since then. The Global is a great airplane, hopefully the manufacturer will return to their ‘90s level of support. Their future depends on it.
As I always say: people that buy private jets are really buying time, not a plane. This means that an OEM have to have a super-supportive customer service department to fix planes quickly when they go tech and keep their clients flying, hence giving them more time. This is so simple and common-sense but I feel that in today's world, common-sense is no longer common...
Good to see such comparos Fab, thanks. Would be interesting to see comparo between ACJ220 & Global 7500 as both are designed by Bombardier & fall in similar list price bracket.
