FIRST EUROPEAN DELIVERY OF CHALLENGER 3500

So eager was Bombardier to unveil its Challenger 3500 super-midsize jet that it jumped the gun, debuting the model one month prior to 2021's NBAA-BACE event.

At the time Bombardier CEO Éric Martel remarked, “We simply could not contain our excitement ahead of the National Business Aviation Association event in Las Vegas," An evolution of Bombardier's storied Challenger 300 aircraft family, of which the Canadian airframer has delivered over eight-hundred specimens since the type's January 2004 introduction, the 3500 borrows DNA from Bombardier's Global 7500 flagship.

On 23 June 2023, Bombardier announced the first delivery of its Challenger 3500 to a European customer. The handover occurred during a 29 May ceremony at the plane-maker's Montreal headquarters. The aircraft, registration D-BAPE, passed into the care of its new owner, Germany's Aero-Dienst GmbH, a charter airline operating business-jet and air-ambulance flights out of Nuremberg Airport (NUE). Founded in 1958 by German technology and heavy-equipment firms Diehl and Faun, Aero-Dienst operates air-ambulance services on behalf of ADAC Luftrettung (German Air Rescue), Germany's largest air-ambulance operator by the metric of fleet-size. Aero-Dienst is among the oldest German airlines still operating under its original appellation.