G650 Cabin Noise Complaints??

As Jet News almost necessitated me to post about this subject, here is my personal opinion based on my experience flying the and flying with the different aircrafts. And this both in the cockpit and in various positions in the cabins. I am not presenting any decibel figures, just personal impressions. The aircrafts, I am comparing, are the Gulfstream G 650 ER, the Bombardier Global 6000 series and the Dausault Falcon 8 X.

At first, all three cabins are very comfortable and deliver a cozy enviroment during all phases of the flight. But the question was, is the rear of the cabin of a 650 noisy. All three aircraft had basically the same cabin layout. Double club seating and a separated couch area with bathroom aft.

In the forward and mid cabin the noise level was pretty similar on all three aircraft but subjective the 8x was the quietest. Towards the rear of the cabins and especially in the separated couch areas (what I would take as the owner enroute sleeping room), the two twin jets got noisier than the tripple engine Falcon 8 X. According to my personal and subjective feeling, the 8 X cabin was the most quiet cabin, overall and especially in the back. Plus from the perceived frequency of the background noise and the felt vibration level, the 8 X was the most comfortable cabin, especially in the rear part. The air conditionings may have added to the noise level,

The 650 ER was the noisiest of all three in the rear cabin and the Bombardier Global somewhere in between. Again personal feelings only, no numbers. I think, this is caused by the two mighty engines of the twin jets in the rear of the fuselage, very close to the couch area. The 8 X engines are smaller and transfer less noise into the cabin. Again personal opinion only.

There are more reasons for buying a specific business jet than fust the rear cabin noise but this was the queastion.

But when asked as a pilot, which of the three aircraft I would buy, I would come up again with the Falcon 8 X. It can operate from and into shorter runways according to the rules (three engines). Also the two others are
theoretically a little bit faster, the Falcon 8 X can take shorter routes over the Atlantic (ETOPS), when flown
commercially and one more personal point, the Falcon had a shower facility in the rear bathroom. The 8 X flys and handles like a fighter plane and if equipped with the double head-up displays with the FLIR overlay, Your pilots will love You for buying that plane.

Again, as I do not want to enter a fight with Gulfstream and Bombardier, due to my personal impressions, my personal taste and my personal opinion, the 8 X was my favorite long range business jet. For cabin comfort, it can only be beaten by an Airbus ACJ 319 or ACJ 330. Since the 737 max affair, Boeing is no longer and will never be again on my radar.

And as I was the guy signing the cheque, the decision was very clear and very obvious .

HTMO9

The sound of a smartphone video taken by a passenger has absolutely no meaning regarding the actual or personally felt noise level inside the cabin of a large business jet.

During cruise, I personally felt the separated rear couch area to noisy for a good sleep, period! As far as comfort is concerned, the rear cabin of the 8 X was more quiet, had a more pleasant sound frequency and less vibrations.

The 650 ER is a great performing aircraft but do not believe that all performance figures bublished in the brochure can be achieved at the same time, like going directly after T/O to FL 510 and cruise at 0.95 Mach with max. allowable cabin load and achieve the published max range. No aircraft can do that.

But under the bottom line, the 8 X can operate from and into shorter runways than the 650 ER, even in hot and high, can fly more direct routes over large bodies of water and in my personal experience, has the more comfortable cabin.

The Bomardier was ruled out due to lack of trust towards the Parent Company of Bombardier Aircraft. They have canceled to many great aircraft and rail projects in the past. I did not want to end up with an aircraft out of production after a few years.

I have taken rides in the 8 X for example from northern Germany to Australia with only one refueling stop at Singapore several times. And this with a perfect sleep on the couch in the rear cabin. A very reliable aircraft with a technical readiness very close to 100 %.

Having a master degree in aeronautical science and more than 12.500 hours of stick time in more than 150 different military and civil fixed wing aircraft and helicopters and as graduate of the USAF test pilot school (USAF TPS), I believe, I am qualified and able to make a statement about the above subjects.

Cabin comfort, internal and external noise and vibration levels have really become much more important on business aircraft these days.

When I remember or first company twin engine airplane (long before I was allowed to fly them myself), the old Piper Aztec, called the "AzTruck" because of its noise, its high payload and its slow speed, I still shake my had. After a longer flight, one was completely exhausted from the noise and the vibrations. My father used it only (as a passenger) when going into smaller airfields. But our noisiest airplanes we ever had, were the Cessna 337 Skymaster, the famous Pushpull. We called her the Trumpets of Jericho. She was my first twin engine rating. I almost crashed her during T/O because of a mistake in the pilots handbook. The VR was figure to low for that uge nose wheel gear door opening like an airbrake, when raising the gear. After several chrashes in Europe and the States, the figures in the books were changed.

For longer routes, we had one of the earliest King Air 90. Still noisy inside but at least the cabin was pressurized. Our first company jets were the Cessna Citation 500 and the Dassault Mystere 20. By that time I flew already the F-104 G Starfighter in the German Navy and lost interest on those boring slow civil aircraft .

Today it would be difficult to force higher ranking management staff to fly in an aircraft with such limited internal height and higher noise and vibration levels. Even I myself have dropped my loved Cessna Citation II for something more comfortable and most of all faster. When flying myself (single pilot), it is the Pilatus PC-24, when sitting in back it is either Airbus or the 8X. But when flying for fun, I do not mind to fly my old Boeing Stearman or my old amphibious Soloy Cessna 206.

Other reason for choosing a specific business aircraft is the type of usage and the typical airfield enviroment. The airfield infrastructure in Europe and especially in Germany is much more limited with smaller runways on anything other than international airports. Where the typical local IFR airfields in the USA have 8.000 ft or longer runways, You are lucky to have 5.000 to 6.000 ft available here in Europe.

With the 8X, we can go max. weight in and out of for example Samedan, Switzerland. A very high elevation and rather short airport. I really would not like loosing 50% of the available power directly after takeoff, when having to climb out of that valley.

I would not mind, if based in the USA, to fly the 650 ER. You guys have numerous large airfields available with no noise restriction, 24 hours operation time and a dense service network. But could You take a 650 ER into London City Airport. The Dassault 8 X, I can.

HTMO9

Impressive resume: I heard the Test Pilot school is pretty tough..
Congrats on passing the program and graduating.

Yes it was! But that was a long time ago. The master degree in aeronautical science and a jet pilot course with a certain amount of flying hours was a prerequisite for the course and luckily the Air Force paid for the course. As my thesis on university was about interference resistances on fuselage-wing transitions at transsonic speeds (0.85 to 1.1 Mach), I felt pretty comfortable during the academics. But during the practical phase we had to evaluate 3 totally different aircraft. I got a Aérospatiale Alouette III, single engine turbine helicopter, an old Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle passenger aircraft and for my peace of mind a North American F-100 Super Sabre. The last one honestly a pig during approach and landing (Sabre dance!). A pretty tough collection for me at that time. This 6 month course was one of the most demanding courses, I did during my whole military life but very educational and even more interesting.

The only aircraft still I fly today (because of my age) besides my gliders and single engine props are my PC-12 and PC-24 and of course when not in use by others, my Airbus H-145 helicopter. As long as my flight surgeon will let me, nobody will prevent me from getting in the air.


The Alouette III


In the air


The Caravelle Cockpit

Aye, the Caravelle: Remember it and flew in it back in the day.
What was your opinion of it?
Did the school have one for you to fly and evaluate?
Was it 2 or 3 man cockpit?
I believe there is one on Sweden being maintained by a group of fan boys, but not in an airworthy condition, it may never fly again.

I retired with 16,500 hours, one of the favorite airplanesI flew for a living was the C-185, the other 2 favorites was the DC-3 and the B-747-200.

Flying was fun for a while, but after a few airline bankruptcies with furloughs and unemployment and starting over again and again on the bottom, I got tired of it.
You have the right idea cruising around in your Falcon jet.

The old heads are occupying again a thread for their the older I get, the better I was . But anyhow:

The principle of the course was getting Yourself familiar with the aircrafts by selfstudy (no aircraft manual, no performance data), develope some kind of checklist for Yourself, talk to the technicans and take the aircraft into the air after your paperwork had been checked by the instructors and technicans (with a safety pilot of course). In the air, testfly the bird like you would fly a prototype. During Your allowed number of flying hours You had to evaluate the flight envelope and some performance data. If your written data and your flying experience were confirmed by the real paperwork and the safety pilot, You had passed the test for this aircraft.

I do not remember exactly which version of the SE 210 Caravelle it was but it was a former US aircraft, I think from United Airlines. And it had a 3 men cockpit with 4 seats mounted in the cockpit. For me as a fighter pilot, flying this strange old airline aircraft was a real challenge. But I must have past the checks, as the USAF TPS badge is still on my old pilot jacket.

How was flying this old piece of iron? Noisy, underpowered, thursty and old instruments like in the T-37 Tweed. As the aircraft was a design conglomeration of different aircrafts like for example the cockpit and fuselage section of the DH Comet. I have no access to my flight logbooks at the moment, as I am presently in hospital but when back home, I will look up more details. It's flight characteristics were not really made for a fighter pilot, just look at these large stall fences on the wings.

The F-100 I flew, was a former Thunderbird Acro Team aircraft, totally over g'd and worn out but at least a fighter aircraft! The torque ignition of the afterburner was always an eye opener. It sounded more like an explosion than igniting the burner.

The Alouette III was easy, as I had flown the German Army Alouette II in Germany before. But the Alouette III was more powerful and most of all it had much more energy in the rotor blades. A big advantage during autorotation. The crazy thing was, it always cruised with a 3 degree deflection of the fuselage from the birds flightpath.

The German Air Force prepared us nicely for the USAF TPS with a lead-in program. Without this course, we German pariticipents would have had much more difficulties passing this course. But all of this is long time ago. In a few weeks I am getting 69 years old. Only flying for fun now and not for busines anymore . And traveling longer distances only in the back with a cup of coffee.

Horrido!

Had to google it: Tally-Ho.

Roger on the Caravelle: Noisy you said, with the engines way back?
Must be wind noise in the cockpit?
Your test pilot school was probably at Edwards Air Force base in the desert.
I was there with a 747 once, a military charter.
15,000 feet runway with another 15,000 overrun, does that ring a bell?
We were empty on take-off and requested a high performance take off with a fighter break to the right: The tower of course said Approved and Cleared for Take-Off: We used max power, picked up the gear just after take off and leveled off while accelerating through all the flap speeds and kept accelerating up to VNE (I think, 26 years ago..) Then we gently pulled up into a steep climb and were at 10,000 feet in a very short time with the nose pointed towards home base @ JFK.
250 knot speed limit below 10,000' you said? Not at Edwards.
Yes, the old beast can be high performance if empty, at max gross however she is a pig and should be handled with care.

Aye, old flying stories, got lots of them. People said I should write a book, but if I did, an immediate arrest would follow with time behind the bars. Mum is the word

Yes Edwards Air Force Base, California. And sorry, with the Caravelle being noisy, I ment the out side noice during takeoff and landing. The old single circuit engines were real fuel to noice converter. In the hot desert, the underpowered jet lost even more power. But as You said, the runways were indeed long enough.

I had a forced landing in the single engine F-100 with a compressor stall and an open nozzle. Pretty high landing speed and I needed all of the concrete runway. But talking about noisy cabins, the older business jets like the Citation 500 or the T-39 Sabreliner were really noisy in the cabin. You had to fly with ear plugs. This not only for the poorly insulated cabins but also for the rather primitive cabin airconditioning and pressurisation system. Modern jets are much more comfortable.

But the noisiest passenger aircraft of all times for me is still the Norman Britten Islander. And this inside and outside. This aircraft is still widely flown on the North Sea Islands in Germany because of the short runways and the STOL capability of that Aircraft. The aircraft below is already the noice reduced version with the 4-blade MT-Prop. But You can still here them 20 Nm away.



Their operation is really interesting. Normal flying time is 8 to ten minutes. The pilot has to load and unload the baggage of the passengers and he has to make up to 45 flights to the island per day. Several of my former squadron buddies flew and are still fling after retirement for those companies on the coast of Germany. But the most interesting flight is the 30 minutes trip from Nordholz Navy Airbase near Cuxhaven to the island of Helgoland. The airfield is located on a dune close to the island and has really short runways. If You try to land there and the controller has the impression, You will not make a safe landing, he will send You home. And nobody cares about the noice. All tourists are on the main island.



But back to the subject. The 650 ER rear cabin is probably not really noisy at all. I am most likely only totally spoiled by the comfort of the 8x.

Btw. Horrido is the old toast of the German Fighter Pilots. "Horrido, grab the sow by the tail, Hussa, Hussa, faaabulous !!!!"

Sorry got carried away .

Roger on the BN-2 Islanders being noisy: Never flew 'em but sitting for anchor in the Bahamas next to North Cat Cay, you could hear them come and go..
(I enjoyed the piece and quiet of my sailboat with solar panels, then the Islanders came)
You mentioned Piper Aztecs also being noisy: I flew them in the Caribbean for Virgin Air, scheduled service to St. Barths and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Got 400 hours in them, they get even more noisy when the side door flies open:
It did when I had a late night charter and was sloppy latching the door: It flew open a few inches after take off and scared the poop out of the female pax sitting next to it.
To close it had to lean over her and use both hands and some muscle to latch it,
(No auto pilot, while wrestling the door, my female pax got even more nervous as the Aztec started banking in the night)
Found out later there is a trick kicking rudder to alter the airflow and close the door.
Another noisemaker is the C-185 I flew in Alaska for the Department of Fish and Game: On take off the tip of the prop blades goes through the speed of sound, can't hear it in the cockpit, but on the ground you sure can: It shrieks..
As a young bush pilot I loved the noise and living next to the airfield I heard it night and day. (Day light at night in Alaska during the summer)
Good ole days..
Never flown a business jet, I imagine the modern ones have active noise cancelation
using some kind of electronic magic? (Counter noise?)
THE noisiest airplane I flew was a DHC-3 Single Otter: The wheel house is right behind a big radial engine..David Clark headphones helped a little, but it still sounded like uh, sitting right behind a big radial engine,
Give me a heads up next time you are in Florida, we will get together and tell a few flying stories.

The noisiest aircraft I ever flew and was fully rated for in the military, was the Dornier Do-28 D2 Skyservant. Every Fighter wing had 3 to 4 of them for shuttle services. They were flown as secondary aircraft by the normal line pilots. That beast was so noisy and so much vibrating and because it was so bloody slow (120 Kts cruise speed and no autopilot), the crews were completely exhausted after a round trip from northern Germany to Bavaria and back home. But I loved flying that taildragger. Stall speed 58 Knots, it could land and takeoff on a soccer field but we could not refuel on US airfields, because the US Air Force Europe had no Avgas anymore. I collected more than 900 hours in it and because of that, my hearing capacity is reduced a little bit today. The Air Force was too stingy to buy us noice cancelling headsets.




That old ARC-34 UHF radio on the center panel was the major cause of trouble in flying and operating that flying dog house. That old tube radio, being located in the nose (of course therefore no room for a weather radar !), was the reason for the birds weight and balance problems, when the cabin was completely empty.

When we landed on USAFE bases dropping all passengers or cargo and cross servicing asked what we would need, we had to ask for 80 liters of water. We had four empty jerrycans for that purpose always available in the baggage compartement. But the big question mark in the eyes of this poor airmen was always funny. They must have thought, we were flying on water .

There is nothing better than flying taildraggers, Horrido or Tally-Ho.

Yeah, I am fond of them taildraggers as well.
Last gig flying tail wheel was the 1986 Silver Salmon season 1986 in Alaska:
I took a DC-3 up there to haul fish of the beaches: To get the fish in the plane we
carried a Bobcat front loader up from WA state:

We removed the cage to fit it in the cargo door, then drove it uphill to park it right over the wingspan. (Simple CG calculations: Heavy sh!t over the wing, lighter sh!t behind the wing)
To find the weight of the Bobcat I called the company we rented it from: They said 4,500 lbs and you are not taking it to Alaska are you? Me no sir, absolutely not, that would be crazy, no, no.
On the way we lost a generator and before landing in Cordova we lost another generator, landed on green flashings lights from the tower.
Added fuel and got one generator going but dead batteries, pulled the battery from the Bobcat up to the cockpit between the seats and ran jumper cables to the ship's batteries below the cockpit floor.
(Not a great idea, fuel booster pumps were electric, so was the feathering for props, lose the remaining generator and you could could/would crash and burn.)
Aye the innocence and cavalier attitude of youth: I was a DC-3 Captain in my 20s and thought I was bullet proof.
We spent 6 weeks buying fish from the Eskimos and flying it to the nearest cannery.
It ended well.
To stay with the thread: Noisy airplane, but we were lucky: This airplane had the 14 cylinder Pratts and a boosted version, the -94 with 1,350 HP, the "norma" DC-3s had 1,200.
The more powerful engine saved our beacon getting off in less than 2,000' with a full load of Silver Salmon.
It was chilly and sea level also..
This is the actual airplane, a bit worn out maybe, but the pay was ok.

More flying stories to follow, all true of course..

You are right Norseman, modern larger business jets have active noise cancelling systems. They are basically an array of loudspeakers hidden in the cabin behind the panels. They are controlled by an automized system that produces a counter-noise which in turn, when optimally tuned, cancel the engine and air condition noise. But the noise is not gone, You just can't hear it anymore. When I want to listen to fine music, when in the air, I wear my bose active stereo headsets. But then the stew has to touch me, to get my attention.

But there is nothing like flying an open fabric covered by-plane with a big radial engine.


Or an turbo prop amphibious plane. That divides a man from a boy!



The old men and their flying machines .

I think it was an option on the order list on later models. But not all aircraft had it, as far as I know. At least the bird I flew in did not have it. Do not get me wrong Ron, the G 650 ER is a great looking and performing aircraft. But under the bottom line for the use in Europe, the Dassault Falcon 8x was the better choice for us.