The Safe Twin That Terrified the FAA

The Lear Fan 2100 was supposed to be Bill Lear’s final aviation miracle: a futuristic business aircraft that promised the speed and status of a small jet, the fuel burn of a turboprop, and the safety of a twin without the deadly engine-out handling problems that haunted conventional light twins. Built around a radical carbon composite airframe, twin Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 engines, a rear-mounted pusher propeller, and a single Western Gear combining gearbox, the Lear Fan looked like it could embarrass the Beechcraft King Air, Piper Cheyenne, Cessna Conquest, and other executive turboprops of the early nineteen-eighties.