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The Flight Plan
I arrived at the Dassault factory delivery center in Bordeaux on an early June morning ready to make the leap across the Pond. I was lucky enough to fly with Dassault Aviation’s chief test pilot, Philippe Delehume and his first officer, Herve Laverne.
Philippe and Herve filed the flight plan for our aircraft–FWWGS (S/N196 in the 2000 line)–with JetPlan.com, a subsidiary of Jeppesen. After a little data churning,the JetPlan computer spit out a suggested routing that would burn the least amount of fuel. The numbers showed seven hours and 52 minutes at Mach 0.80 and aninitial cruising altitude of FL400. Afterburning off some fuel, we planned to climb to FL430. All aircraft flying the Atlantic that are CPDLC-equipped (controller pilot datalink communications) are reporting outside air temperature and upper-level winds back to
flight planning organizations hundreds of times each day to maintain the accuracy of the flight planning process. I’d be watching those numbers closely to see how well the 2000LX performed. Since the traditional North Atlantic tracks sandwich airliners between FL310 and FL390, we would be above that congestion and have the freedom to take a more direct route.
Score another one for business aviation.
The flight plan took us west northwest from Bordeaux to a point over the eastern Atlantic where we’d enter oceanic airspace for the longest portion of the flight. Because the forecast winds were light, our course would take us unusually south for an oceanic crossing. I had originally thought we might see the tip of Greenland, but we wouldn’t pass even close. We’d be carrying maximum fuel for the trip, just over 16,600 pounds, and planned to land at TEB with an hour’s reserve. Jetplan also computed our Equal Time Points (ETPs), to help us decide where to head if we experienced an engine failure or other critical emergency. When one engine quits, that is not the time to determine which way to go. With only a single operating engine, the 2000LX would also be unable to remain at FL400 and would inevitably drift down to FL300 to complete the trip. Should we experience a cabin depressurization, we’d need to drop down quickly to approximately 10,000 feet because of the lack of oxygen. At 10,000 feet, flight planning in a jet becomes a serious challenge because fuel burns can easily be double those at high altitude. Early in the trip an engine failure or shutdown meant a turn toward Shannon, Ireland. A bit later in the journey, we would transfer our option to Keflavik, Iceland, and farther west, to Gander, Newfoundland.
In the old days–or just a few years ago–there was an art of manual arithmetic needed to accurately calculate ETPs. Now the JetPlan provides them as part of the service. We all carefully examined the ETPs before takeoff to be certain they made sense. The weather said we’d see some undercast along the way across the Atlantic, but no convective activity of any kind. The weather at Teterboro was forecast to be slightly less than VFR for our arrival.
The Dassault ground crew at Bordeaux had already covered most of the major preflight items, such as fuel and oil. About the only job left for the pilots was the walkaround.
Since the aircraft was green and unpainted, it was easy to see how all the bits of metal were woven together to build the 2000, especially the winglets. The installation and certification of the winglets devolved for a time from a great idea into one with a few sticking points that emerged during flight testing. The winglets added more twist to the wing than regulators felt comfortable with, so much so in fact that at the extremes of testing the twist interfered with the operation of the leading-edge slats. The problem demanded a redesign of a portion of the
wing to more effectively handle the wing flex issue. The new design is now also standard on the 900LX, the Falcon 900 with Aviation Partner winglets.
A Green Machine
Climbing aboard a green airplane, you see plumbing and wires everywhere and little else in the cabin. Turn left at the top of the stairs and the cockpit is completely outfitted, but look tailward and bare metal and the potty way in the back are all there is to see. Loaded on board FWWGS was a
three-foot-square emergency kit with the cold-weather immersion suits and a liferaft, just in case. A closer inspection showed flare guns and radios, all items we hoped we’d never need. The cabin also held a considerable amount of ballast–on the order of 500 pounds–in the form of 22-pound lead plates placed just opposite the main cabin door to adjust the cg for the lack of an interior.
The 2000LX has the standard control wheel and yoke, something I must admit I frowned at slightly upon making my way to the left seat. Sorry, Dassault, but you spoiled me when you let me fly the sidestick- equipped 7X. The Airbus A380 I flew (see pilot report in July AIN) was also sidestick controlled, and it is the only way to fly. The 2000LX seats offer a wide range of powered positions that even tall folks should find comfortable. Philippe took me through the flow checklists before we lit the engines. On the Falcon everything works through the center multifunction display (MFD),
although each pilot has a cursor control device–the airplane version of a mouse– and a multifunction keyboard to enter datato the system. I found the 2000LX’s uncluttered panel very pleasing, even as it extends to the system’s layout on the board above our heads. I’ve never been in a 2000 before and it was pretty simple to figure out how things worked just by looking at them.
The 2000 has a single start button just below the center MFD that works for both engines. We turned on the two battery switches and the APU master to
initialize the APU computer and automatically open the system’s doors. The APU provides the source of high-pressure air to start the big Pratt & Whitney Canada motors. We needed only to confirm our position for the FMS before we started the engines.
Once we selected APU air, engine starts were more or less a nobrainer. Open the fuel cock and rotate and hold the starter switch for about two seconds. N1 settled in at about 22 percent with N2 at 51 percent.
On the ground we burned about 700 pounds total per hour. FWWGS was equipped with two GPS and two IRS systems for the trip. Before departure, we also ran through the FMS speeds page. Today we set up for 200 knots initially, until we’d eave low-altitude airspace, increasing during the climb to 260 knots (Mach 0.76) up through cruise altitude, where the temperature looked like it would be about 15 degrees C warmer than standard. We manually checked each point of the flight plan from Bordeaux to Teterboro. The large displays made adding waypoints and visually verifying the route easy from Bordeaux, like direct CAN (Cognac–yes, like the drink) to UN470 (the first airway) to SEPAL (the intersection where we would enter oceanic airspace). Philippe typed as Herve read the elements to make sure there were no errors. It took about seven minutes to enter the cyan-colored (not-activated) data. Flight plan activation changed all cyan data to white as confirmation.

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The airplane’s basic operating weight was 23,011 pounds, with a zero fuel weight of 23,211 pounds. Our ramp weight was 39,500 pounds, well under the maximum gross weight of 42,200 pounds. Bordeaux temperature was 16 degrees C and the wind was northeast at five knots. We planned the Cognac 6 Bravo departure off Runway 5 with a climb to 14,000 feet right off the ground toward one of the clearest blue skies I’d seen in quite awhile. The FMS said we’d need about 4,800 feet of the runway’s available 10,000 feet at our current weight. We calculated V1 at 122 knots, VR at 129 and V2 of 132. Flaps would come up at 142 knots and our return speed in case of a problem just after takeoff would be 132 knots. Before takeoff, the FMS said we would arrive at TEB with 2,000 pounds of fuel. Off to the races with both engines humming along nicely, I taxied to Runway 5 around a plethora of construction at Bordeaux Airport.
The Transatlantic Flight
The 2000LX is an easy aircraft to fly. After a 15-second ground roll, we were airborne and headed toward Cognac and soon northwestward out of France toward SEPAL, where we’d join the oceanic track toward the U.S. some seven hours west. We needed to request the oceanic clearance 45 minutes before reaching SEPAL, which meant Herve was on the HF right after takeoff to request the clearance from Shanwick since SEPAL is only an hour out of Bordeaux. Flying in this part of France is nothing like the U.S. We never stopped and climbed in under 19 minutes to FL400 while burning less than 1,700 pounds of jet-A to reach that altitude. Shanwick verified our four-letter SelCal code, “FLRP,” before we got too far, as this would be an alternate method of grabbing our attention should we lose radio contact. SelCal, which is an acronym for selective-calling radio system, can alert an aircraft’s crew that a radio station on the ground wishes to communicate with the aircraft. I hand flew the airplane most of the way to cruise altitude to get a feel for the controls since the rest of the trip I’d be letting the automation fly the route while Philippe, Herve and I kept an eye on things. The standard comment from Falcon pilots sounds redundant, but it’s true. As heavy as they are, Falcons fly like fighters. As it turned out, we would not fly through a single cloud on the trip until we began our descent into the New York area later that day. We soon had our oceanic clearance in hand and verified it before we activated it in the FMS. A performance check when level at FL400 with just over 3,100 nm left to run to TEB showed us at a true airspeed of 444 knots and a groundspeed of 448, confirming the lack of wind. Outside air temperature was
showing ISA +11. Fuel flows settled at about 1,700 pounds per hour total. The visibility out the front office windows of the 2000LX is superb, though there wasn’t much to see: not a ship in sight
anywhere on the ocean below to the left, right or out in front. Now came the real fun. After an hour and a half or so level at FL400, there was little to do except make sure the airplane was on course and that all systems were normal. To keep ATC happy we wanted to be certain we crossed our reporting points within three minutes of the estimates the JetPlan produced. We estimated 48N15W at 1207Z. As the minutes ticked by and we approached the first point I checked the time. It was precisely 1207. Nice. I soon had my first taste of the HF frequency mess I’ve heard people talk about for years. We began the flight on 5649 MHz. It sounded like a Citizens Band radio to me. Imagine a half dozen people all trying to talk on the same frequency at the same time with lots of noise and squealing on the frequency. I did manage to get up and walk around the barren cabin during the flight and learned something interesting. After the first hour or so we had removed our headsets in the cockpit and used the aircraft speakers to hear ATC. Even so, the noise level was tolerable. Walking through the cabin toward the rear cargo area, I noticed the noise was also tolerable. I shot some video in the back and the camera’s internal microphone picked up a slight rushing noise but had no trouble hearing my voice. I did try calling the guys up front as I stood in the rear, but the noise was too much for that little trick. What made this amazing though was that there was no sound-deadening insulation to speak of in the cockpit or the cabin… no
padding, nothing. Just bare metal walls. I imagined FWWGS, after leaving Dassault’s Little Rock completion facility outfitted in a few months, would have a significantly lower internal noise level than what I experienced.
After about three or four hours in the air, I did another performance check. True airspeed had increased to about 460 knots while our fuel burn remained at about 1,750 total per hour. We began to see the crosswind component pick up to about 80 knots off the left wing, pretty much what had been forecast. The FMS said we’d still have about 2,100 pounds of fuel on arrival, although our plan was to make some fuel by climbing higher as soon as we started talking to Gander. We passed about 650 nm south of the tip of Greenland. I wondered about the correction card for the standby “whiskey” compass, a smallpotatoes item in an airplane like the Falcon 2000 this when everything is working normally. The card said the compass could be off by as much as 90 degrees with all the electrics on, something I found hard to believe. We turned off the windshield heat for a moment and watched the compass swing from 155 to the 245 degrees, the course we were really flying. That’s something to keep in mind down the road. With 9,000 pounds of fuel remaining and still three hours from Teterboro, we requested a climb and headed for FL430. True airspeed picked up to 465 knots and fuel flows decreased by about 200 pounds per hour. It was great fun as we crossed well above the North Atlantic Tracks to watch the airliners flying in trail of each other like trains on the metro transit system. We were headed where we wanted to go, not where ATC needed us. Crossing the coast of Gander, we saw ice in the water, but no major bergs that we could clearly define from nine miles above the water. A check of the weather called for about 1000
and three when we arrived at TEB with the ILS to Runway 19 the preferred approach.
Fuel To Spare
For me, at least, the hours passed too quickly and we were soon descending for the approach into the New York area. I planned the automated approach on the ILS and listened closely as the level of chatter on the Teterboro arrival frequency picked up, especially when the controller told us to watch out for a guy in the clouds about 1,000 feet beneath us, whom he didn’t seem able to contact. We were in the clouds so we tried our best to keep him on TCAS at least. Welcome to New York. At 500 feet agl, I disconnected the
autopilot and autothrottles. Despite the displaced threshold on Runway 19, we landed and easily made Taxiway Juliet, translating to just under 5,000 feet to get it down and stopped. The flight plan called for 7+52 and a landing with 2,000 pounds of fuel. The final numbers were scary to a guy who still does some of the long-range navigation in his head; the trip took 7 hours 52 minutes
exactly and we landed with 3,100 pounds of fuel. Had we needed to, we could have easily flown for another hour and still had a reasonable reserve. After just a shade under eight hours of flying we burned about 13,500 pounds of fuel for an average of 1,687 pounds per hour for the entire trip.
My long-range flight substantiated the claims of the Dassault folks, who say the 2000LX delivers a 5-percent performance boost over the 2000EX and an additional 700 to 800 nm in range. After wringing out the airplane over an eight-hour flight, I’d say those are not simply claims, but more like the honest truth.

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Balu, danke für den Bericht, war wie immer interessant zu lesen.

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Wieso? Yoke steuert ja nur Aileron und Elevator, das hat nix mit dem Rudder zu tun. An den Pedalen würde ich ja nix ändern.

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We flew from Istres near Marseilles, using the Falcon 2000 engineering prototype (F-WXEY) fitted with the production winglets and recently returned from the USA at the end of the joint certification programme. My safety pilot was Dassault chief test pilot Philippe Deleume. Basic operating weight (with a crew of four) was 10,475kg, plus 2,720kg of fuel, giving a weight at start-up of 13,195kg.
On walk-out, my first impression of the winglets were not only their vertical size but how beautifully blended they were to the wing. After boarding into the left-hand cockpit seat, the EASy avionics were programmed (it continues to be my favourite electronic flight information system cockpit and the best cockpit man-machine interface that I have operated). I would fly the complete sortie, with Deleume handling the radio telephony/air traffic control.
Take-off was with slats/flaps 2, giving a VR (rotate speed) of 110kt. After take-off we briefly levelled at 1,500ft at an indicated airspeed of 250kt, with the throttles almost back at idle. When cleared by air traffic control, we climbed directly to flight level 410 at 260kt/M0.75. Early sustained climb rate passing 10,000ft was almost 7,000ft/min (35.5m/s). From 1,500ft to FL410 took just 10min.
LATERAL CONTROLS
During the climb I could assess the lateral controls (the 2000LX rolls only with ailerons). Roll control instantly felt powerful with very light forces, very sensitive and beautifully harmonised in terms of force ratios allied to the pitch and yaw axes.
The control mechanical characteristics (yoke) showed no freeplay, had very accurate centring and a very small breakout force required to start the roll rate.
Sustained maximum roll rate was 50-60° and that rate did not seem to alter as altitude increased. Once again, Dassault's expertise in flight-control design was highly evident and its marketing claim about the "read across" from its military fighter aircraft to its business jets clearly is an engineering reality.
At FL410 we conducted 45°, then 60° angle of bank turns without fuss. Pulling a little harder beyond 60° angle of bank to 2.1-2.2g only induced a very light wing buffet with no indication of wing rock. Spiral stability was neutral. Dutch roll was positively damped (with yaw damper disengaged).
The aircraft rolled with rudder, without hesitation, in the same direction of the applied pedal. The high flight-level lateral/directional handling characteristics of the aircraft were faultless.
A high-speed simulated "emergency descent" was then flown at M0.85/370kt with throttles idle, airbrake position two (maximum) and with aircraft pitch around 25° nose down. The aircraft was held in a tight 70° angle of bank turn and we levelled at FL150 with ease.
At FL150 and at a VA of 190kt, full deflection lateral inputs gave a roll rate of 55-60°/s but the Q feel had increased the roll control forces slightly to ensure the roll rate was not excessive.
A very small adverse yaw was evident at full aileron deflection, but was almost instantly corrected by the fin, without directional overshoot, on roll-out. Roll control at approach to stall was highly effective and without problem irrespective of aircraft configuration or reference speeds.
An instrument landing system recovery to Istres (flown manually) showed that I was able to track the flight director with almost effortless ease and absolute precision for the required small bank angles and heading changes. The 2000LX shows none of the roll "notching" that sometimes accompanies aircraft that also have spoilers for lateral control or that have any amount of lateral control yoke freeplay.
Two visual circuits were then flown aggressively on to a very "close" downwind leg at 1,000ft above ground level and a very tight finals turn, including a late finals lateral offset manoeuvre (at about 200ft above ground level) to simulate a threshold capture from a poorly executed instrument approach when arriving at decision height.
The 2000LX flew like a well-behaved fighter aircraft and it was a delight to fly it. I simply could not fault the business jet in any handling regime.
CONCLUSION
I left Istres in awe of what the Falcon 2000LX represented. The combination of take-off, landing, climb and cruise performance, flexibility of operation, comfort, size of cabin, impeccable "fighter-like" handling characteristics, advanced cockpit avionics systems and simply staggering range/fuel efficiency figures now makes the 2000LX the worldwide benchmark in this class of business jet.
Other present or future competitors will have to work very hard to match it. The 2000LX Dassault/API winglet integration is faultless.
If "perfoenvironomics" can be the new buzzword for 21st century aerospace, then the Falcon 2000LX is an aircraft that now perfectly encapsulates that concept.

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Take-off was with slats/flaps 2, giving a VR (rotate speed) of 110kt. After take-off we briefly levelled at 1,500ft at an indicated airspeed of 250kt, with the throttles almost back at idle. When cleared by air traffic control, we climbed directly to flight level 410 at 260kt/M0.75. Early sustained climb rate passing 10,000ft was almost 7,000ft/min (35.5m/s). From 1,500ft to FL410 took just 10min.
......The 2000LX flew like a well-behaved fighter aircraft and it was a delight to fly it. I simply could not fault the business jet in any handling regime.