Raytheon has decided to ‘re-emphasise’ its Beechcraft and Hawker brands because, as ceo Jim Schuster admits, “the brands haven’t been as prominent as they deserve to be”.

It is a move welcomed by owners in Europe; Industrieflug’s chief pilot Michael Moeck said: “I personally thought that it was ridiculous when the company announced it had stopped the Beechcraft brand in the first place. Everyone connected the name Beechcraft to quality aircraft but they decided to rename these as Raytheon. I think the reason why it has brought the name back is because sales have suffered since.”

Raytheon said that as part of the brand ‘re-emphasis’, the company is concentrating on serving the two distinct types of customers for each brand by separating the brands into two divisions.

Each of these will have separate sales and support organisations headed by a president/general manager. Brad Hatt, who will oversee the Hawker division, said: “This division will concentrate on bringing value to our corporate customers. We are serving a new customer base with the Hawker Horizon super mid-size jet and creating a dedicated management team to meet the needs of all corporate customers.”

Moeck added: “I think that Raytheon along with Lear have been the hardest hit among all the companies, but Lear is now under the wing of Bombardier. Raytheon lost a lot of money on the Beechcraft because it developed the Premier I and it’s still developing the Horizon, which has meant a lot of investment while revenues were down.”

Rebranding appeared to be the theme of this year’s NBAA, where predictably investment in new projects was not widespread. “Americans are show people, so this rebranding was probably so companies had something to unveil at the exhibition. Personally I don’t think the name is what it’s all about, if you’re interested in a certain type of aircraft you’ll buy it because of its capabilities,” said Moeck.

Along with Bombardier’s Continental being renamed the Challenger 300, Gulfstream also rebranded its product line. “To me a Gulfstream V will always be a Gulfstream V. Maybe people will get used to it in the future, but I really can’t see that it will boost sales. I’m sure someone earned a lot of money from these ideas though. It can also become confusing, for example I know that people have problems differentiating the Citation II and the CJ2,” added Hoeck.

Cessna has reacted quickly to the interest in the Eclipse 500 by the introduction of the Mustang. “Cessna does not sleep on the market, it looks at what people are asking for and then builds it.

“When the CJ was released everyone said there wasn’t a market for such a small jet and now the 500th has just been delivered. I think that in the future Cessna will stop building the Bravo and use the CJ3 as a replacement, because the cabin size is very similar,” said Hoeck.

The German pilot gave us his general opinion on today’s market: “I think a number of people change their plans as the economy fluctuates. When Bombardier started the programme for the Continental [Challenger 300], the worldwide economy was quite strong and everybody wanted to have an aircraft. But today things are different and manufacturers have to find a unique angle to market a new aircraft because of the fall in demand.

“From an operator’s point of view I have also heard that something is going on with JAR OPS 0 or JAR OPS II, which should start regulating flight departments. A number of smaller companies are either not prepared or interested enough, so when regulations fall into place they may be a little shocked,” added Hoeck.