X Factor

The French airframer has delivered 5,000 aircraft since 1945, across the military, business and (rather less successfully) commercial aviation markets. Within the last 50 years, 72 per cent of aircraft have been exported, with a nearly matching 71 per cent of revenue export-related. Dassault employs nearly 12,000 people worldwide, over three-quarters of whom are based in France.

Over 2,400 Falcon business jets have been delivered, accumulating nearly 18 million flight hours and accounting for over two-thirds of Dassault’s revenue, at 69 per cent. Currently, the Falcon 900, 2000 and 7X are in production, with 241 Falcon 7X models delivered so far and the 8X undergoing certification tests since its first flight fromDassault’s Bordeaux-Mérignac facility in February this year. The 5X is expected to take to the skies within a matter of months.

It feels like a very small, very luxurious airliner

Dassault has achieved its largest Falcon platform yet in terms of cabin volume. The 5X is longer (at 25. 2m) than the 7X (23. 19m) or 8X (24. 46m), and both tri-jets have a slightly smaller cabin diameter than the 5X. The more efficient 5X compares reasonably in range terms, at 5,250nm, to the 5,950nm 7X and the 6,450nm 8X.

The 5X’s width is also a key selling point, which Dassault hasn’t hesitated to highlight with the registrations of the 5X aircraft. Its computer-generated mockups have featured an aircraft ‘registered’ F-XWB (which must have raised the eyebrows of a few lawyers in Toulouse) while the aircraft that rolled out in Mérignac was F-WIDE.

The 5X is both wider and taller than the Gulfstream 650 or the Bombardier Global Express family – by a hair’s breath, but when you’re talking the difference between stooping or not stooping in your private jet, every hair’s breath is valuable.

Interestingly, the Global Express competition shares a fuselage with Bombardier’s Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) 50-100 seater family. Dassault hasn’t produced a commercial airliner for 40 years, since the Airbus A319-sized Dassault Mercure went out of production in 1975. With the 5X, Dassault finally has an aircraft cross-section that would suit a return to the commercial side of the industry.

Given Airbus’s poor sales of the double-shrunk A318, and the lack of any European-manufactured regional jet (Sukhoi’s Superjet is manufactured in Komsomolsk-na- Amure, further east than Chinaand half of Japan), could Dassault be eyeing a return to commercial aviation? Inside Dassault’s latest mockup of the 5X cabin, the finish is elegant, professional, clean and finished to a standard one would expect of a US$45 million jet. Dassault offers a nearly infinitely customisable set of cabin experiences, suiting either the business-focused market for point-to-point flatbed long-haul flying or the bells, whistles and gold trim buyer. Walking into and out of the cabin, there is a sense of spaceprovokes a double-take given that this is a business jet and not an airliner.

But no airliner has a skylight.

The 5X offers a ‘zenith window’ by the door near the front of the cabin. An electronically dimmable window (EDW) furnished by Vision Systems utilises a lightcontrol film to provide a full range of light control – from entirely open to blocking up to 99. 9975 per cent of visible light and all the ultraviolet spectrum. The cabin windows, too, are larger. Even comparing across a crowded hangar, the extra inch of cabinwindow height the 5X offers compared with the 7X is visible.

The 5X is the most efficient Falcon yet – and cheapest to operate

A significant selling point for the 5X is its efficiency, driven in large part by its pair of new Snecma Silvercrest SC-1D turbofans, which offer the largest bypass ratio on the market. The Silvercrest is launching on the Falcon, the first time that Snecma has been a launch powerplant for a Falcon or indeed the first time that a Falcon has been the launch airframe for any engine.

Snecma is currently running seven Silvercrest engines, which haveaccumulated 7,500 hours and have already undergone testing for ice ingestion, unbalanced turbofans, high altitude relight, plus various software and air system testing.

The prominence that Dassault gave to the Silvercrest – with a fullsized, electrically rotating cutaway mockup the first thing guests at the rollout saw – highlights the importance of a new engine to the efficiency and operational numbers for the 5X. Dassault claims that they are overall 50 per cent more efficient than comparable powerplants.

The Silvercrest promises a fuel efficiency increase of up to 15 per cent, even while it provides 11,450lb of thrust and achieves a 10db margin underneath US FAA Stage 4 noise levels. Emissions, too, are promising: under 50 per cent of even the most stringent standards required among worldwide regulators.

With a new wing and advanced aerodynamics, Dassault is promising the Falcon will be a third more economical to operate than the competition overall, quoting a 30 per cent reduction over G450 operating costs and 35 per cent less than the Global 5000.

Dassault expects fuel efficiency to be the principal driver of efficiencies on direct operating costs, and forecasts that the Falcon’s direct operating costs (US$3. 750m per year) would save up to US$5 million compared with the G5000 (US$5. 053m) and G450 (US$4. 740m) over six years based on an average of 600 hours per year, based on the 2015 Conklin and de Decker numbers.

The 5X is built to make the most of Dassault’s aviation heritage As a moderately sized company, Dassault has been able to flow aeronautical engineering and new technologies from its 4. 5th generation Rafale fighter to the Falcon line. Dassault isn’t shy aboutits aviation heritage either, with the entrance to the 5X rollout through a hangar-full of Rafales being assembled in Mérignac, and a Rafale on display in the rollout hangar as well.

The 5X’s flaperons – a multifunction flight surface that can be a flap to add drag or lift, an aileron for roll control purposes, or a lift-coefficient boosting differential surface working in conjunction with the aileron system – are inherited from the Rafale, the first time this kind of flight surface has been used on a business jet.

Yet with Dassault’s background with the Rafale’s flaperons and its digital flight control system (DFCS) the addition of flaperons to the Falcon and its DFCS is an incremental rather than a revolutionary change, de-risking the program.

The design of the Falcon, too, benefits from the wider Dassault legacy. Techniques and tools mastered during the 3D modelling and simulations of the flight characteristics of the Rafale and the new nEUROn stealth UAV, together with the aerothermodynamic modelling from the IXV(Intermediate Experimental Vehicle) escape craft for the International Space Station, mean that the Falcon’s aerodynamics are well within Dassault’s capacity.

It introduces significant flightdeck and flight control innovation

Dassault’s EASy flightdeck reaches its third implementation with EASy III in the 5X’s spacious cockpit. Wide flat-panel displays, space for electronic flightbag tablets and dual sidesticks – combined with wide, deep flightdeck windows that are 32 per cent bigger than on the 7X – make for a pilot-pleasing space in the second fly-by-wire Falcon.

The prominent heads-up display (HUD), manufactured by Israel’s Elbit Systems, is a key part of the safety and operational reliability improvements in the 5X. Noticeably large cameras in a recessed section of the nosecone combine a synthetic vision system global terrain database and enhanced vision system camera/sensor set into the combined HUD view, for one or both pilots. Together, these systems reduce controlled flight into terrain risks and reduce the minima for takeoff, approach and landing.

A new Honeywell RDR 4000radar in the 5X also enables pilots to monitor weather further into the distance, with a range of 320 miles and better hazard detection, including improved vertical definition of thunderstorm hazards.

Production, too, is building on Dassault’s wide portfolio of aircraft and systems

Opening the 5X’s flight envelope will be aircraft S/N 001 and 002, with a third test aircraft to verify completion standards. A previous non-flying airframe completed static and fatigue testing at the CEAT aeronautical testing centre in Toulouse last October.

Across the aircraft, composites make up about 15 per cent of the 5X, with Dassault specifically avoiding using more composite material to avoid the well-publicised issues with the production of the composite-heavy Learjet 85.

Dassault relied significantly on its in-house CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application) computer aided design, manufacturing and engineering system, initially developed in the late 1970s for the Mirage and continuallyimproved upon and iterated since. The current generation of CATIA is newer even than that used for the Rafale, and illustrates again the flow of technology, ideas, expertise and staff between the military and business aviation sides of the airframer.

The company’s design team were open about the significant cultural and operational changes that were required in order to change their – and their suppliers’ – ways of working to make the database so integral to design and production.

A single reference database is shared across the entire company for design, maintenance, documentation and production, and is also shared with partner companies contributing significantly to the 5X. It’s particularly efficient because both Dassault and its partner companies can be working to a shared understanding, while also working at maximum capacity at their home design offices, synchronised through Dassault’s Saint Cloud headquarters in Paris. Indeed, Dassault says partner companies ask other airframers why they don’t utilise systems like CATIA to the same extent that Dassault does. Dassault isn’t stopping there, either – it has plans to implement aircraft simulation into CATIA, including systems-based modelling and design. Live experimental display of aircraft in the design and production stages are also on the cards, as well as new ways to understand how systems interact – in essence, a pilot in a simulator operates the control stick, and the designers and engineers can see how the electronics, hydraulics and aerodynamics respond.

Just as China is already the largest market for the 7X, so is it likely to be a significant buyer of the 5X given the range, size and fuel burn profiles of the aircraft. China is also getting a good chunk of the manufacturing, with a significant part of the main cabin section manufactured for the French company Socata by the AVIC-CACC-CAC conglomerate in China.

Will the 5X’s cabin interior options exceed the new wave of super first class products?

The size of the 5X’s cabin allows for a significant amount of customisation at Dassault’s design showrooms in Teterboro, near New York City, and Le Bourget, in Paris. While the standard layout – indeed the one shown in the latest version of the 5X cabin mockup in Mérignac – is for eight passengers, Dassault was also advertising layouts for 12, 13 and 14 passengers, with the addition of a pair of three-seater sofas in the rear section of the cabin.

In flatbed terms, however, the 5X is limited to five beds sleeping six people, given that the centre section of the cabin has a double bed, with two single beds forward and a convertible pair of singles that can be turned into a king aft.

The fit and finish is all you’d expect after spending US$45 million, and of course the design isn’t just down to a Marc Newson – it’s down to you, the owner, and Dassault will fit it out just how you like it at its facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. That includes an integrated control and media system that houses an onboard video and audio server and delivers it to every seat.

While Dassault’s argument that the cabin of the 5X is bigger and better than any other business jet on the market may be a winner, the four-engined elephant in the roomis the Etihad Airbus A380 with its Residence and Apartments first class product. Etihad is looking to expand its market into the prospective flyers who might previously have chartered a private aircraft with its top offerings, and while the limited connection opportunities on Etihad’s small A380 fleet mean that the airline of Abu Dhabi can’t offer the route and timing flexibility of a business jet, the ultra-long range A380 does have to stop less than a 5X.

The real test for Dassault and the other private jet manufacturers will come when Emirates eventually responds to Etihad’s first class passenger experience advances. Its massive A380 and Boeing 777 fleet, significant connectivity over Dubai and a world-leading product (given that the Emirates onboard product is starting to look a little tired) is likely to change the face of private aviation.

Flexibility is the private jet advantage, and the 5X is remarkably flexible

The flexibility of operating a private jet from small airports – since, of course, not everywhere can offer an A380 parking room – is a key selling point for the 5X thanks to its short field and acute angle approach capabilities.

An all-new wing with new control surfaces engineered to enable slow approaches, together with the slats, flaps and especially the flaperons inherited from the Rafale, give access to 20 per cent more airports than previous generations of business jets. An approach speed of 105kt, similar to a turboprop, increases safety and control as well as the number of airports that can be served.

The 5X is expected to join its 7X stablemate in achieving certification for airports like London City, Gstaad, St Tropez, Lugano, and even Daocheng, which is the world’s highest civil airport at 14,471ft.

In addition, the 5X’s maximum landing weight to maximum takeoff weight ratio is nearly 95 per cent, which enables a greater range of stop, pickup and go missions for the jet – useful for carrying passengers out of smaller airports where fuel availability and pricing may not be competitive.

In terms of speed, the 5X can either sip fuel at a cruising speed of Mach 0. 8 or the pilot can put the pedal to the metal and hit Mach 0. 9 if the full range profile isn’t required. Dassault expects a 5,200nm range at Mach 0. 8, which would enable a jet taking off from Sydney to reach all of Japan, most of the population centres in China and a significant proportion of eastern India. Eastbound, Honolulu is well within range, which means that the speed/fuel burn calculations are flexible for either a fast or an economical trans-Pacific crossing.

Dassault suggests typical city pairs (given eight passengers, a speed of Mach 0. 8, 85 per cent annual winds and NBAA reserverequirements) of New York and Moscow, Johannesburg and Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow, London and Miami, Sao Paulo and Chicago, and Shanghai and Sydney.

5X, 7X, 8X – the obvious gap in the pattern suggests the future for Dassault

As Dassault ran through its latest business jet product range – from the 5X to the 7X to the 8X – the obvious gap is a 6X. As the stretched 8X is the evolution of Dassault’s tri-jet platform, so will the unannounced but practically inevitable 6X be the 5X twin-jet platform’s next step.

Indeed, looking at the 5X, 70cm wider than it is long, it was striking how reminiscent the little twinjet is of the Airbus A380 in terms of appearing to be built for the obvious next-step stretch, and everything apart from the cabin being at a scale that lends itself to the future larger version.

With the 5X’s first flight planned for this northern summer, and certification testing expected to proceed apace, will the next big news from Dassault be the 5X’s larger stablemate?