Hawker 700
By Mark Huber - October 1, 2009
Introduced in 1977, the hawker 700 has endured thanks to its durability, spacious stand-up cabin and bargain prices. You can pick one up on the used market for as little as $1 million. spend a little extra on paint, a new interior, a cockpit makeover and a maintenance service plan, and your airplane will be hard to distinguish from a brand-new Hawker 900XP selling for $14 million.
The midsize British aerospace Hawker 700A sort of reminds me of legendary NFL quarterback Brett Favre. It’s rugged, dependable, old, getting a little slow compared with the new guys, costs a little too much to keep around, needs minor surgery from time to time and isn’t really cost-effective to program with new plays. Plus, people keep talking about retiring it. But against all odds, the 700 always seems to have another season left in it, albeit sometimes for a different team.
The Hawker 700 is unquestionably a workhorse, but when it comes to ramp presence, well, let’s just say that it’s aesthetically challenged. The windshield looks as if it was stolen from a 1950s turboprop. (OK, more like a 1930s DC-3.) “It’s so ugly that only a mother could love it,” said Rick Engles, a Hawker 700 expert who worked for British Aerospace’s Corporate Jet Division between 1976 and 1993 and is now president of Vance & Engles Aircraft Brokers in Maryland. Engles said three factors explain why the 215 Hawker 700s produced between 1977 and 1984 remain popular: “cabin, cabin and cabin.”
The Hawker 700’s passenger compartment is bigger than that of competitive airplanes, such as the Learjet 55 and Citation III. It seats up to eight (plus the two pilots up front) and is 21 feet long, six feet wide and almost six feet tall. The standard cabin layout features five single slide-swivel-reclining executive seats and a three-place side-facing divan. You’ll also find small forward and aft closets, a minimalist forward galley and an aft lavatory through which you access the baggage hold. (Legally you can put a ninth passenger on the belted potty–perhaps a passenger you really dislike.) While the 604-cubic-foot cabin is spacious, the baggage compartment, at 40 cubic feet, is woefully inadequate for today’s take-it-all-with-me jet set.
The Hawker 700 can fly almost 2,000 nautical miles with seats full. Available payload with full fuel is 1,350 pounds. Hawkers have been around since 1962 and perhaps no business jet has a longer history of evolutionary performance improvement. Over the years, the aircraft has received significant upgrades in airfoils, engines and systems. Today it remains one of the best-selling business airplanes of all time, with more than 1,000 produced across all models. The Hawker’s rugged and simple systems have created an enduring market for the line.
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