Established Embraer customer Freeman Pickett III has taken delivery of the 500th Phenom 300 series business jet. According to GAMA, the Phenom 300 is the only business jet model to reach this milestone in the last 10 years.

Receiving his Phenom 300E aircraft at Embraer's customer centre in Melbourne, Florida, Pickett says: “The Phenom 100 served us very well for our trips throughout the midwest, but as we began to fly more, with more passengers and to destinations further away, we began to use a Phenom 300 to which we had access. The Phenom 300E has the speed, range and capabilities that we now need including single pilot operation, a very important feature for us, with all the cabin space and comfort for everybody onboard, not to mention all the baggage space. The cabin technology is unrivalled and elegant and the connectivity is convenient.”

The Phenom 300E carries the ‘E’ for ‘Enhanced’, referring to its inheritance of the Embraer DNA Design, first introduced in its larger siblings, the Legacy 450 and Legacy 500 medium cabin jets. Its new interior is designed to offer increased cabin space, more personalisation options and greater ease of maintainability

“The Phenom 300 has fascinated customers since it entered the market and its tremendous popularity only challenges us even more to continue to deliver the ultimate customer experience,” says Embraer president and CEO Michael Amalfitano. “This landmark delivery to a current Phenom 100 customer with prior fractional ownership experience further validates the true innovation that the Phenom 300 delivers to private owners, corporations and operators in the access economy.”

Originally launched in 2005, the Phenom 300 entered service in December 2009 and has sustained more than half of the light jet market share since 2012. The aircraft is in operation in more than 30 countries, having accumulated more than 800,000 flight hours on over 600,000 flights over the past decade, carrying almost 2.5 million passengers over a distance that circles the Earth 13 times, equivalent to a round trip to Mars. On average, a Phenom 300 takes flight every 3.5 minutes, which amounts to more than 400 flights a day. In 2018 alone, Phenom 300 customers completed close to 150,000 flights.

Over the last five years, the Phenom 300 fleet has doubled in size, growing at a rate of just over 18 per cent with its utilisation growth rate outpacing its fleet growth by 30 per cent. Among fractional ownership programmes, the Phenom 300 represents the largest customer base and fleet size.