Hey guys,

I was just very curious about the Learjet family in general after seeing a few around lately. I know they are not the longest range aircraft, the L45 I believe has a range with full payload of just shy of 1,800 nm, however they also look very small. So I have two main questions:

1. If anyone has personal experience of a flight on board a Learjet, are they particularly comfortable to fly in? They just seem cramped and if you had a full load of 8 pax on a L45, it could start to feel less than luxurious!

2. I can't find an obvious space for baggage, does the Learjet have enough space to store baggage for numerous passengers?

Thanks in advance  

I have no personal experience either flying or riding in a Lear Jet, but your question recalled a famous quote from Bill Lear himself when the original Lear Jet 23 came out. When questioned about the small cabin he quipped "You can't stand up in a Cadillac either!"

Russ Farris

1.) It does indeed feel very cramped when the LJ45 / 60 is full. We do operate a LJ60 and usually have 4-5 passengers on board.

2.) The baggage compartment is very tiny and located aft of the cabin. It can be accessed from under the L/H engine only.
It's more of a '2-day-trip' jet when passengers have only small suitcases.

On a side note, the performance is very poor with a full baggage compartment and passengers.

Hope this helps a bit  

You will rarely have a full flight in a bizjet, no matter the size. A Lear 45 is pushing into the mid-size class, a Lear 31 or 35 is much smaller inside. A Lear 45 has a heated baggage compartment accessible from the outside, one of the largest for this size jet. The older, smaller Lear 35 you have to haul bags through the cabin and place them behind the aft bench seat, although some have an add-on external locker.

Are you buying one?  

I have rode a L45 a few times, but always between 2 passengers (including myself) and not more than 4-5 with little luggage for 1-3 hour same-day/weekend return trips. Which I think it is the main target of this plane; it is not designed for long trips (refuel!) nor long holidays.

So it was fine and didn't feel cramped.

[Edited 2014-10-26 09:50:16]

Thanks guys for all your informative answers (as always with this site) and satisfying my curiosity. Yeah I guess the Learjet ain't the aircraft to go on a several month world tour with!

Your question can be summed up in one word....

"No".

Lears look cool, the old ones climb like a burned monkey, and they have a strange appeal to them. Other than that, they are crap. At least the old ones anyway.

how did the partial lavatory work? on those 35 and below? lift a seat but be exposed to whole cabin?

Quoting EGPH (Thread starter): 1. If anyone has personal experience of a flight on board a Learjet, are they particularly comfortable to fly in? They just seem cramped and if you had a full load of 8 pax on a L45, it could start to feel less than luxurious! 2. I can't find an obvious space for baggage, does the Learjet have enough space to store baggage for numerous passengers?

As others said, with 8 pax on board, you feel cramped so fortunately you can't stay a lot more than 4 hours inside due to its range...

Baggage hold is behind the lavatory, rather small if you are off with full cabin for a 7 days trip...

Quoting EGPH (Reply 5): Yeah I guess the Learjet ain't the aircraft to go on a several month world tour with!

It can be, but with not more than 4 pax and with short to medium legs  

Quoting malaysia (Reply 7): how did the partial lavatory work? on those 35 and below? lift a seat but be exposed to whole cabin?

Yes, potty seat facing the door right behind the FO seat with a curtain on either side that ran on a track in the ceiling on the 20/30 series. Real privacy there. Yeah, it sucked and was awkward and rarely did we have it installed. The pressurization outflow valve is by the FO's feet so you got the aroma up front immediately. We had a very famous female singer leave one coiled up in there once because she didn't flush, gross! We rarely flew more than 3.5 hours even in the 35/36 so the customers were advised it wasn't on board unless they requested it be installed for their charter. If it was a full load of pax the potty seat had a padded top and a seat belt so it doubled as some lucky guys seat for the flight too.

I really have nothing good to say about the old ones flying as a pax or a pilot other than it was a rocket when empty with not much fuel. Also, it was loud like planes should be although they were very loud inside too and my loss of hearing from years of flying them makes me regret even more the time I spent in them. I want to say the 20 series are banned pretty soon in the US sometime in 2015.

Quoting tb727 (Reply 9): Yes, potty seat facing the door right behind the FO seat with a curtain on either side that ran on a track in the ceiling on the 20/30 series. Real privacy there. Yeah, it sucked and was awkward and rarely did we have it installed. The pressurization outflow valve is by the FO's feet so you got the aroma up front immediately. We had a very famous female singer leave one coiled up in there once because she didn't flush, gross! We rarely flew more than 3.5 hours even in the 35/36 so the customers were advised it wasn't on board unless they requested it be installed for their charter. If it was a full load of pax the potty seat had a padded top and a seat belt so it doubled as some lucky guys seat for the flight too.

Just like the Mustang privacy... but without any curtain  We "laughted" a lot about that with colleagues 

Quoting malaysia (Reply 7): how did the partial lavatory work? on those 35 and below? lift a seat but be exposed to whole cabin?

On the 35's with the narrow door there is that weird potty seat just aft of the door with this combo of partitions that pull up from the refreshment cabinet and aft from the cockpit. Your feet end up perched on the door step and you're crammed into this very small space with your knees up around your chin.

I've also seen the curtains when the potty seat is across from the main door. At least that way you have the full cabin width.

Quoting tb727 (Reply 9): I really have nothing good to say about the old ones flying as a pax or a pilot other than it was a rocket when empty with not much fuel. Also, it was loud like planes should be although they were very loud inside too and my loss of hearing from years of flying them makes me regret even more the time I spent in them. I want to say the 20 series are banned pretty soon in the US sometime in 2015.

You knocked that one out of the park.

That airplane has me convinced Bill Lear suffered from some sort of mental illness. The 20 series do 3 things exceptionally well. Burn gas, make noise, and climb like hell. Other than that, they're crap.

Talking about the crapper seat, we kept snacks and drinks under it. The guts had been removed leaving plenty of storage space. Passengers never knew what was there anyway.

Back in my JetStar flying days, I knew a couple of pilots who flew a Lear 36 for a Fortune 100 company who operated a few LearJet 36’s because of their transcontinental range. The company often used the Lear’s to fly from the Northeast to the west coast nonstop, they replaced Saberliner 60’s, which had to make a fuel stop enroute with the Lears so they could make the trip nonstop.

The story is true about the odors from the lavatory exiting out through the cockpit, in fact it was the pilots standard procedure that anytime they saw the privacy curtain being closed by a passenger, they immediately went on oxygen, they didn’t bother to wait until it was determined that the passenger took a dump in the toilet because by then it was to late.

The pilots hated flying the LearJet transcontinental and they told me the passengers hated it as well, imagine being confined in a airplane for 5 plus hours in a cabin where the interior height at the highest point is 4.4 feet, they or the passengers could not even stand up in the cabin to stretch their legs during the long flight.

On the LearJet the cabin normally was set up so the 2 rear seats were like bench seats, not separated so you sat shoulder to shoulder to the person next to you. The LearJet fuselage was a perfect circle, not like most corporate jets or airliners where the fuselage walls by the windows is flattened out so there is more room at the shoulders, so at the maximum width of the interior at the widest point midway up the cabin wall is about 5 feet which is near where your elbows are and tapers in from there so the interior space is less at the shoulders. And the total length of the passenger cabin from the bulkhead behind the pilots heat to the bulkhead behind the rear seats is around 13 feet.

Many corporate jets do not have flat cabin floors like airliners, they have a dropped center aisle of about 6 inches, which gives the passengers a little more room for walking hunched over to their seats and on the LearJet this was where the 4.4 feet was measured. The raised space under the passenger seats is where the control cables and the wire bundles are routed.

Corporate jets use club seating for their cabins, unlike airliners where all the seats face forward, so the next set of seats forward from the rear bench seats face aft, and again unlike airliners where there is room under the seats for your feet, the seats go all the way down to the floor because they are articulated, you can swivel the chair and if set up the chair can move inward away from the cabin sidewall. Without this set up you would have to play footsies with the person facing you for foot space. Also there are no tray tables on the back of the seats like airliners, the tray table sits vertical inside the sidewall and lifts up and inward and you share the table with the person facing you and they are called drop tables. Going forward in the cabin there is an additional set of club seats opposite the cabin entryway door and forward of that is the potty.

This is a typical seating arrangement, corporations can tailor their seating configurations to however they want, as long as it is certified and approved. I have seen the cabin set up with the 2 rear bench seats as described, then 4 seats set up in a club seating arrangement with the first 2 seats facing rear and the next 2 seats facing forward and again with the potty opposite the entryway door.

Many small corporate jets have the potty inside the passenger cabin and like the LearJet have the top cover of the potty padded and upholstered and have a backrest and a seat belt and shoulder harness and this is an approved passenger seat. So imagine with the full load of passengers the unfortunate passenger who gets to sit in this seat, probably the lowest ranking passenger. There is no window, you are facing sideways and looking at the cabin entry door, and if any passenger needs to use the potty then you have to switch seats with that passenger, and where does that passenger go sit when one of the pilots have to use the potty, I doubt into the vacated pilots seat so that passenger winds up in the cabin probably sitting on some ones lap. And for privacy all you had was a floor to ceiling curtain that extended from the sidewall inward to the entry door, I don’t remember a sink installed to wash your hands, so I assumed there was a load of wash and dries on board.

I am 6’3” and I tried to get into the pilots seat of a LearJet 35 based at HPN, my home airport and could not, but the Chief Pilot of this flight dept. was 6’4” and he managed to fit in, he either must have been a contortionist, double jointed or a glutton for punishment.

I guess I was spoiled by the JetStar, it also had a dropped aisle and with this we had 6 feet of headroom and in the galley which was in the rear of the passenger cabin the floor dropped a little bit more and I was able to stand straight up, and behind the galley we had a full private lav 6’3” tall and the full width of the cabin.

JetStar

Quoting jetstar (Reply 13): I don’t remember a sink installed to wash your hands, so I assumed there was a load of wash and dries on board.

No sink.

Ours didn't even have the curtain.