I still being at my work here at Aeroflap and suddenly finding this question asked by someone, ok I won't now, it's really been a few years (months), I already forgot who asked me this question.
But let's get to the facts...
In the mid-60s, the highlight was jet aircraft, they were incredibly fast, reliable, economical, allowed flying at speeds greater than the speed of sound and, in addition, made huge aircraft that had great autonomy.
Logically, what was present in large aviation soon ed to executive jets, it was a great attraction to stop using that twin engine that flew at about 400 km / h and then you could fly at twice that speed and take half the time it was necessary before.
In that decade we had the great BOOM of small executive jets, with the Learjet as the great desire of the market, of course Cessna soon reacted and launched the Citation, but both had great differences in the project, and the Citation as we can say... it was an aircraft inadequate for the time, not that perhaps less luxurious or less capable of avionics, but it was slow.
As a result of being slow, we have the cause of its wing design, its speed when flying in cruise was 662km/h, a very suitable speed for the use of trapezoidal wing, How can we see in this post, and on planes of the time like the Electra and a little further on the ATR. Of course, this was not the speed close to the so-called transonic flight, when the aircraft flies at speeds between 800km/h and 1050km/h, between these speeds it is more efficient to use a arrow shaped wing.
That was the difference for the recently launched Learjet 25, it flew, when cruising, at speeds close to 860km/h, a speed more compatible with the agility and speed that jet engines were famous for at that time. This was even funny at the time, it earned the Citation the nickname of Slowtation, apart from the fact that the Learjet had a better autonomy and flight ceiling, definitely a checkmate for the Slowtation.
Throughout the aviation innovations, the slow engine that equipped the Citation was replaced by a turbofan turbojet, which improved performance considerably, but until the mid-1980s the Learjet was the most desired executive jet by all because of its comfort, speed and transport capacity, ing that according to the speed there is an appropriate wing, the swept wing is inefficient at low speeds, as well as the trapezoidal one is inefficient when close to the so-called transonic zone.
Wing types and their aerodynamics – Enflechada
Wing types and their aerodynamics – Trapezoidal
