Page 34 - March 2016

though we were held down by several ATC restrictions on the way up.
For conservative planning, Goforth figures on 1,500 pounds of fuel for the first hour and 1,300 pph thereafter. That said, we settled into cruise at FL410 using only 1050 pph, at 96% N1. Limiting Mach is .77, which the CJ4 was eager to exceed. We were truing at 420 knots over Oklahoma City, cleared direct KABI. All too soon, it was time to start the descent; Goforth set up a descent target of 10,000 feet when 30 miles out. He says the CJ4 is easily capable of slowing down while going down, seldom requiring the speed brakes.
With 12.5% more wing area than the CJ3, the CJ4 requires adherence to speed control on approach, but fits into 4,000-foot runways without difficulty. We had 7,200 feet available, so adding 5 knots above the Vref of 103 kts over the fence still had us down and turned off at the 5,500-foot point. Abilene Aero gave us 700 pounds of quick Jet-A and we were soon buttoned up for the return hop. A 50-knot tailwind at FL450 took us back to base in good time, and we arrived at KSTJ just two hours after landing in KABI.
A Vital Business Tool
As Norton puts it, “there’s no way we can travel like we need to without the airplane. We pick up customers and bring them to our plant, we discuss the business in privacy during the flight, and we take distributors and headquarters employees to meetings, minimizing nights on the road and long hours away from their family.”
During the previous week, right after putting the new CJ4 into service, Norton and Goforth took the airplane to visit a customer in Shawnee, Oklahoma, a nice town with a 6,000-foot runway that’s not convenient to reach by airline. While there, Norton got a phone call from an incoming Korean distributor who had missed his connecting airline flight in Dallas and was stranded at DFW after 26 hours on the road. No problem; the CJ4 met him at the Signature FBO and he was in St. Joseph an hour-and-a-quarter later.
A trip earlier in the week illustrated the ability of BioZyme’s airplane to get them where they need to go. The first stop from St. Joseph was North Platte, Nebraska, then to Billings and Dillon in Montana, and to Boise, Idaho after that. Try putting that together in one day by airline.
The flexibility of general aviation is its strength, bringing people closer to where they need to go, on their schedule. The CJ4 was an excellent choice for BioZyme, as the company continues to expand its business.
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32 • TWIN & TURBINE
MARCH 2016