Embraer's Legacy 450

With its recently launched Fly- by- Wire Legacy 450, Embraer Executive Jets has beat its own design targets to get a leg up on the competition.

- Rob Mark

A decade ago, some people scoffed when Embraer announced its intention to create a complete line of business airplanes, from entry-level jets to behemoth bizliners, especially when the sum total of the company’s bizav experience to that point had been creating the Legacy 600 from the ERJ-135 regional jet. But once the Phenom series of light jets — the 100 and the 300 models, both capable of operation with a single pilot — appeared, people began paying much closer attention to what the Brazilian company was creating. By the end of 2014, the Phenom 300 had become the most delivered business jet in the world and earned the same honor again in 2015. By then, nobody was scoffing anymore.

In April 2008, Embraer announced another series of jets designed to neatly fit between the Phenom 300 and the Legacy 600/650. The company again surprised some observers when it revealed that the new airplanes, called the Legacy 450 and the 500, would be completely fly-by-wire machines, something unheard of in the midsize jet category. Also, the two new aircraft are so similar that only the sharpest eyes will notice the Legacy 500 is a slightly longer cabin version of the 450. The Legacy 450’s first flight in December 2013 came about a year after the 500 first took to the sky. By mid-2016 the company had delivered 31 Legacy 500's and three 450's.