Civil aircraft in the 1990s didn’t look radically different from those of the previous 20 years but, as had happened in the previous decade, they were different beneath the familiar skin. Like the 1980s, the economy of the 1990s got off to a rough start, but this last decade of the millennium picked up a spectacular head of steam midway through its 10-year run.
Business aviation in particular grew by leaps and bounds as the airplanes offered were made ever more capable. The 1990s were the decade of the Global Express, Gulfstream V and Boeing Business Jet–all memorable for offering range of 6,000 nm and, in the case of the BBJ, a quantum leap in the epitome of luxury: space, filled with all the creature comforts and electronic communication (including satcom) and entertainment gadgets anyone could want. Bedroom suites with showers had previously been the preserve of Middle Eastern potentates’ converted widebody jetliners (the capacious 747 in particular) but by launching a business-jet version of the 737NG jetliner Boeing and General Electric brought this level of comfort and business utility to a broader market–considerably broader, in fact, than the two companies dreamed of when they gave the project the green light based on expectations of selling fewer than 10 aircraft a year.
