Boeing BBJ

Where it came from

Boeing and General Electric formed Boeing Business Jets as a joint venture in July 1996, at the instigation of Phil Condit and Jack Welch, with Borge Boeskov running the programme. The design idea was simple and is still the whole point of the aircraft: take the 737-700, the shortest of the Next Generation family, and give it the strengthened wing, centre section and landing gear of the 737-800, so that it can carry a very large fuel load a very long way instead of a full passenger load a short one. The first aircraft flew on 4 September 1998. Blended winglets from Aviation Partners became standard early in the run and added about 5% to range.

The variants follow the fuselage. The BBJ2 is the longer 737-800 at 39.5 m against this aircraft's 33.63 m, the BBJ3 is the 737-900ER, and current production is MAX-based. The original 737-700 aircraft — the one this page describes, and still what most European charter tails are — accounts for 113 deliveries. Boeing had taken 198 orders for 737-based BBJs of all variants and delivered 190 of them through December 2022.

One practical consequence of how they are built: a BBJ leaves Renton green and goes to a completion centre, where the interior takes a year or more. No two are the same inside. The floorplan is a question about the tail, never about the type.

Who charters a BBJ

Four profiles recur. Sports teams, where twenty-five or thirty people travel with kit and the kit is the difficult part. Corporate roadshows, where principals, deal team and equipment cover five cities in a week on one aircraft. Government and official delegations. And very large or multi-generational families who want a bedroom on a ten-hour sector.

None of them is buying range. A Global 6000 flies the same 11,100 km with thirteen seats from about €11,000 an hour, and a Global 7500 flies 14,260 km. What the BBJ sells is that the whole party fits in one hull, which is why the comparison a client actually makes is against two business jets on the same trip. Two aircraft mean two positioning legs at each end, two crews and two arrival times, and above about nineteen passengers the arithmetic stops being close. Between ten and sixteen it is genuinely worth pricing both ways, and we will.

The tank count is the aircraft

A BBJ can be fitted with three to ten auxiliary belly tanks, and the number is settled at completion and never changed afterwards. It is the first thing to establish about any tail you are quoted, because it decides two things at once.

Our published 11,100 km is the nine-tank aircraft: roughly 6,000 nm, about twelve hours, London to Los Angeles or Tokyo without stopping. That aircraft has 4.6 m³ of hold left, twenty to twenty-five cases, because the tanks are occupying the space the bags would use.

The commoner fit is five tanks. That aircraft flies roughly 10,000 km — still Europe to the Gulf, to most of the United States, to southern Africa — and keeps about 11.7 m³ of hold. For a team or a touring party the five-tank aircraft is usually the right answer, and the range given up is range the trip was never going to use. What you must not do is read the two fits as one aircraft.

Inside the cabin

24.1 m long, 3.53 m across and 2.16 m high, with around 75 m² of floor — more usable floor than anything else on this fleet. You walk it upright, and at that width it is laid out as rooms rather than as an aisle: forward galley and crew area, main lounge, a conference and dining zone, a private office, and an aft master bedroom with an en-suite shower. Operators market day and night floorplans for the same aircraft.

Two cabin attendants fly alongside the two pilots as standard; at this size meal service, cabin safety and turning the bedroom down all need someone. Cabin altitude is 8,000 ft in the cruise, an airliner figure rather than a business-jet one — a Global 7500 or a G650ER holds a much lower cabin, and after ten hours you notice. The BBJ's case is floor area and rooms, not pressurisation.

The corridors it flies, and the airports it cannot use

London–Dubai is about 6 h 45 m and the natural long sector for a full cabin. London–Larnaca is around 4 h 30 m. The short European legs — London–Nice at roughly 1 h 50 m, London–Barcelona about 2 h, London–Ibiza about 2 h 20 m — are flown on a BBJ for group size alone, never for range.

Airport choice is where an airliner costs you. This is a 737: it needs a scheduled-airliner runway, and its 35.79 m span puts it in ICAO Code C, so at a busy business-aviation field the binding constraint is often the stand rather than the pavement. Farnborough, Luton, Le Bourget, Geneva, Zurich, Nice, Istanbul and Dubai Al Maktoum are routine. London City is not: its 1,508 m runway and 5.5° approach admit only steep-approach-certified types, and no airliner qualifies. Cannes, Sion and the short island strips are out for the same reason, and handling, parking and landing fees are airline-scale throughout.

What moves the price

From around €18,000 per flight hour, and on an airliner the hourly rate is a smaller share of the total than it is on a business jet.

Positioning is the largest variable. A few dozen BBJs are on the charter market worldwide, most based in the Gulf or at a handful of European fields, so the empty leg to reach you can run several hours — and unlike a Challenger, there is rarely a nearer tail to substitute.

Crew duty is the second: two pilots and two attendants have to be rostered, and a long sector with a same-day return needs either a night stop or an augmented crew.

Then the ground. Airliner handling, parking and landing fees are not business-jet fees, Gulf routings carry overflight charges that intra-European legs do not, and at Nice in August the ramp space for a 737 is itself the scarce item. Every trip is quoted individually.