Embraer's best-selling Phenom 300 jet has become the first single-pilot jet to fly at 0.80 Mach according to a statement released by the company last week.
Capable of flying at FL450, the Phenom 300E has been re-engined with Pratt & Whitney PW535E1 engines with a thrust of 3478 lbf each, an increase of 3.5%. The extra power has been enough to propel the 300E to a top speed of 464 KTAS.
"Despite the Phenom 300’s extraordinary success in the past decade, our team of visionaries is always striving to deliver the ultimate experience to our customers, which means taking an industry-leading aircraft and making it even better, faster and safer,” said Embraer Executive Jets President and CEO Michael Amalfitano.
“Boundless imagination and intelligent engineering gave birth to the Phenom 300E, and it is with that same spirit that we continue enhancing the most popular business jet of the decade.”
Embraer's major competition in the single-jet market, Cessna's M2 and CJ3 offer maximum cruises of 404 and 416 KTAS respectively and Honda's HA420 tops out at 422 KTAS.
The Phenom 300E will also get an avionics upgrade to include a patented runway overrun awareness and alerting system, predictive windshear, emergency descent mode and many others. The runway overrun system warns if the aircraft’s approach is too steep or too fast.
Embraer has consistently out-sold the Cessna M2 over the past five years, selling on average 20 more airframes for the period 2014-18. Year-to-date figures to Q3 2019 show the Phenom 300 ahead 35 deliveries to the M2's 21.