A Grumman turboprop for the boardroom

In the 1950s Grumman of Bethpage, New York, was known for Navy fighters. Its Gulfstream began as a sideline: a twin-turboprop business aircraft seating 12, which first flew on 14 August 1958 and was the first aircraft designed from the outset for business travel. Grumman built 200. The success led to a jet, the Gulfstream II, and to a decision to split civil work from military. In 1966 the civil business moved to Savannah, Georgia, where there was skilled labour, an airfield next to the site and year-round flying weather. On 4 May 1968 a GII became the first business jet to fly nonstop from the US to Europe.

Savannah and the first jet across the Atlantic

The man who made Gulfstream a company in its own right had started as a 30-cents-an-hour mechanic at TWA. Allen Paulson left home at 13, flew as a TWA flight engineer, then built a fortune trading surplus engines and second-hand airliners through California Airmotive, renamed American Jet Industries in 1973. In 1978 he bought the Gulfstream line and the Savannah plant from Grumman American and renamed it Gulfstream American. Under him the GIII flew in December 1979, the first business jet designed to fly over both poles, and in 1990 Paulson and a crew set 35 round-the-world records in a GIV. Away from aviation he owned Cigar, twice American Horse of the Year.

The mechanic who bought the company

The company took its present name in 1982 and went public a year later. In 1985 Chrysler bought it for $637 million, part of a diversification drive, and in 1987 delivered the first GIV, the first business jet with an all-glass cockpit. Chrysler sold up in 1989 and Paulson, with the buyout firm Forstmann Little, bought Gulfstream back. The 1990s brought the GV, the first ultra-long-range business jet, which set nearly 40 records within months of its first delivery in 1997 and won the Collier Trophy. In 1999 General Dynamics bought the company, and the G550 earned a second Collier Trophy for 2003.

Chrysler, Collier Trophies and General Dynamics

The flagship G650 brought both triumph and tragedy. On 2 April 2011 a test aircraft crashed during a simulated engine-failure take-off at Roswell, New Mexico, killing two test pilots and two flight test engineers. The NTSB found the aircraft had stalled because take-off speeds had not been properly developed and validated, and criticised the company’s conduct during the investigation, which Gulfstream denied. The type entered service in 2012, able to fly 7,000 nautical miles and cruise at up to Mach 0.925, the fastest civil aircraft then flying, and nearly 600 G650s were built before the G700 and G800 replaced it.

The fastest civil aircraft flying

Today Gulfstream is the main business of General Dynamics’ aerospace segment, which took $13.11 billion in revenue in 2025 as Gulfstream delivered 158 jets, 136 of them large-cabin aircraft. About 200 Gulfstreams serve 35 governments as VIP transports, early-warning platforms and research aircraft, mostly G550-based. More than 2,000 aircraft have been built since 1958, nearly all of them at Savannah, where the company employs most of its workforce of more than 19,000 people.

Fábricas

• Savannah headquarters · Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, Georgia — Main production and flight-test site since 1967
• Appleton · Appleton, Wisconsin — Completions centre, acquired with K-C Aviation in 1998
• Mexicali · Mexicali, Mexico — Component manufacturing
• Bethpage · Bethpage, New York — Grumman site where the Gulfstream I was designed and built

Pessoas

• Allen Paulson · owner, chairman and CEO — Bought the Gulfstream line in 1978; Harmon Trophy 1987; owner of Cigar; died 2000
• Mark Burns · president

Recordes e pioneirismos

• GII: first business jet to fly nonstop from the US to Europe, 4 May 1968
• GIV: 35 round-the-world records with Allen Paulson, 1990
• GV: nearly 40 city-pair and speed records in 1997 and the Collier Trophy
• G550: Collier Trophy for 2003; first civil aircraft with enhanced vision as standard
• G150: first business jet certified to FAA Stage 4 noise standards
• G650ER: 8,379 nm Singapore to Tucson, 2019; G800: longest great-circle business-jet flight, Melbourne to Moline, 8,303 nm, 28 June 2026
• G250 renamed G280 in 2011 because 250 can mean stupid in Mandarin