BMH Aviation co-founder and investor Hakan Celikoglu:
Turkiye has a well-developed aerospace industry that has invested $7 billion in infrastructure. We have about 70 international supplier companies with AS9100 certification. This certificate represents the highest international quality standard in the sector and requires at least 10 years of experience in the sector.
Turkiye has also developed a very serious design and test capability. Our human resources are very good and our infrastructure is excellent. Producing aircraft in Turkiye is never a problem. All components are ready, only an infrastructure is needed to sell them. For this purpose, we have taken the ownership of a globally recognised and popular business jet, opened another company in Turkiye with the ownership of that company, for produced the aircraft here and sell it abroad.
If managed well, aircraft production in Turkiye is much more economical. If I, as a company, support my subcontractor and make him certified, this production can be realised much more economically.
We will not only produce the aircraft, but we will also move the design activities of the next aircraft to TR. We are also working on electric and hydrogen propelled models. Firstly, there is the ready design Syberjet Sj30. Sj50 is in design, then Sj70 will come.
This aircraft was started to be designed by Edward Swearingen, a valuable designer, in 1986 for very special purposes. Some of the features that make this aircraft special are that it has the longest range for its size, it has a range of up to 2500 nautical miles, it can fly at 49000 feet above passenger aircraft, and it can keep the cabin pressure at sea level up to 41000 feet. It has an ambulance certificate and the door is suitable for this. It is a very fast aircraft. And one of its most important features is that its ability to carry the pressure falling on its wing is extraordinarily high, so that it can fly like a passenger aircraft even in bad weather conditions. In other words, it has the ability to fly independent of weather conditions.
The aircraft has a 5+2 design, but can be configured as 1+6 since it is a single pilot certified class. One of the special features of the aircraft is that it can take off and land from any runway. It can land on 700 metre runways. It is a technologically very advanced light jet, there are great innovations in design, the engineers working on this project will learn a lot.
We are currently working on further lightening of this aircraft. We are working with Turkish subcontractors and there are big companies that we have agreements with, such as Savronik, who are undertaking all the wiring and avionics systems of the aircraft. There is the company Küçük Pazarlı, they have the capability to do the main fuselage and under wings of the aircraft, and we are discussing to give all cabin/seat responsibility to Türkish Cabin Interior TCI. Especially in the business jet class, cabin services in TR are very superior, we have such advantages. We cannot give the names of other companies at this stage, we have companies that we are at the point of agreement.
Since the company in TR is a wholly owned subsidiary of Syberjet in the US, the intellectual rights of the aircraft to be built in the branch office in Turkiye for its own company will also belong to Turkiye. There will be a main design office in TR, but since our main market will be the USA, the offices there will also remain.
Our aim is to reduce the cost of the aircraft as much as possible. And even, I cannot give a name right now, but we will go to a structure that will rent the aircraft like renting a car from a mobile phone application and make your Aircraft ready at the airport.
We are in the same class as light jets such as HondaJet and Embraer100 etc., but our range is almost double. We offer the range advantage of jets in larger classes.
Our other advantage is that we are in a position to produce 200 aircraft per year with the existing industrial infrastructure in the country. This means a serious game change. In most of the world, the infrastructure to produce domestic business jets is insufficient. We have a great advantage.
There will be a production centre based in Ankara, and OSTIM is supporting the project. Many OSTIM companies will be our subcontractors. The final assembly line can be located at a military base in Turkiye. When we reach 200 aircraft, there will be a serious mass production.
This aircraft was originally designed for Gulfstream. Later on, Gulfstream exercised its option for larger classes, leaving this aircraft open.
Especially in the post-Covid period, not only rich business people and rock stars, but also technical people, managers, doctors, etc. started to fly with business jets. Instead of a large aircraft for prestige, aircraft that can do the same job economically, provide the same comfort, and fly at a much lower cost have started to be preferred. especially companies working in what we call the fractional ownership model are looking for light jets to reach more customers.
An average of 2.78 people fly on a business jet. Currently, 10,000 aircraft are flying in the market we address. There are 10,000 aircraft in our market and we are aiming for a more capable, more economical and more accessible aircraft. And in this class in the world, almost all of them are produced in America, only one of Gulfstream model is similar to our model. The Gulfstream-280 is manufactured in Israel and flies to the US. We took advantage of American legislation and studied this model.
At the moment, Chinese and Indian investors are also very interested. As I said, with a new model we will design, we can produce this aircraft in many parts of the world. And this will lower the costs even more.
Currently 159 airplanes have been sold. The customer of these is a Middle Eastern company. The old customers of the aircraft are very satisfied and they are demanding it again because they heard that it will be put into production again. Individuals want to buy them, but companies also want to buy them. Because it is the most suitable aircraft for the establishment of an aircraft-taxi fleet. The airplane is very economical, but it can do the same job as the big class airplanes. I can fly non-stop from Istanbul to London, from there to Dubai, from there to Almaty. And since the cabin pressure does not change, I can fly comfortably without any fatigue, do my business and then fly again to another destination. The list price of the plane is currently 11.4 million dollars.
Williams, the engine supplier of the aircraft in its current configuration, liked the business plan very much. They concluded that 'we should open its own factory in Turkiye in order to supply the specified amount of engines'. We did not ask, they offered. Therefore, when the assembly activity starts here, Williams will start looking for a partner for production in Turkiye. In TR, R&R is producing, P&W is producing, GE is producing, only Williams was left. We are not asking Williams to please come, but after they saw our figures, they said 'we should come to TR'.
We are not building anything from scratch in TR. We are commercializing the existing excellent infrastructure with a different business model.
