In Las Vegas today, on the eve of NBAA-BACE, SyberJet Aircraft is pulling the covers off a full-scale mockup of the SJ36 at Henderson Executive Airport. It is a nine-seat light jet that, on paper, would fly faster and farther than anything else in its class: up to Mach 0.88 and 3,000 nautical miles.

Those are targets, not demonstrated numbers, and certification is not expected until 2032. But the SJ36 is the most ambitious attempt yet to revive one of business aviation's great what-ifs, the SJ30, a jet that was certified in 2005 and then barely built.

A Stretched, Re-Engined SJ30

The SJ36 is a development of the SJ30-2, which the FAA certified on 27 October 2005. According to AIN, the cabin is stretched by four feet, its width and height similar to the SJ30's, and the old Williams FJ44-2A engines of 2,300 lb thrust give way to FJ44-4As rated at 3,621 lb each. Maximum take-off weight rises to 18,500 lb.

The SJ30 family was famous for its cabin pressure, and the SJ36 keeps it: a 12 psi differential that holds a sea-level cabin all the way up to 41,000 feet. SyberJet also promises fly-by-wire controls, its own SyberVision avionics and a zero-emission auxiliary power unit.

The Jet That Kept Changing Hands

Few business jets have had a stranger life. Ed Swearingen announced the design in 1986. Gulfstream signed up to market it and then walked away. A Taiwanese-backed joint venture, Sino Swearingen, built the stretched SJ30-2 in West Virginia. Dubai investors bought the company in 2008 and renamed it Emivest, production stopped in 2009, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2010. New investors bought the assets in 2011 and created SyberJet.

Through all of that, only a handful of SJ30s were ever built. In August, though, SyberJet said an SJ30-2 had flown nonstop from Jacksonville to San Diego in about four hours and seven minutes, averaging 505.3 mph, which it claims as a light-jet transcontinental record. That record had not yet been ratified by the National Aeronautic Association and the FAI when it was announced.

SyberJet's own behind-the-scenes video of the SJ36 mockup being built for NBAA-BACE.

The Man in Charge

SyberJet's chief executive is Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck maker Nikola. Milton was convicted of fraud in 2022 over his statements about Nikola and was pardoned by President Donald Trump in March 2025. He now leads SyberJet, whose current owners took over the programme in 2023, according to AIN.

GlobalAir, reporting on the mockup, cautioned prospective buyers to look closely at refund and transfer terms before committing money to an uncertified aircraft whose timeline could change. That is sensible advice for any new aircraft programme, and the SJ36 is still years away from proving its numbers.

Still, today's unveiling puts a real, full-size shape to the promise. If SyberJet delivers even close to Mach 0.88 and 3,000 nautical miles in a nine-seat light jet, it will have built something nobody else has. The next six years will show whether it can.

Sources: AIN, AVM Magazine (SyberJet press release), GlobalAir, Runway Girl Network, Wikipedia (SyberJet SJ30), CNN via KTVZ