Although business aircraft manufacturers talk at length about the effort they’ll make to satisfy a customer, ask a chief pilot or director of maintenance about the service they are receiving–and the service they feel they should be getting–and the answer is likely to be emphatic and passionate. Ask a large segment of the industry what it thinks, and you have Aviation International News’ annual Product Support Survey–the customers’ true-to-life responses to the service levels they have received from OEMs over the past 12 months.
Others have tried, but Gulfstream cannot seem to be shoved off its pedestal at the top of service pyramid. This year marked the fifth in a row that the Savannah, Ga.-based manufacturer took the top spot for both newer business jets (with “newer” defined as less than 10 years old) and older business jets. On a scale of 1 to 10, newer jet operators gave the OEM an overall score of 8.16, while operators of older Gulfstreams rated the company at 8.19.
