The convoluted journey of the SJ30 business jet continues, with the design’s latest owners, MT LLC, now announcing they will operate as SyberJet Aircraft. In a brief news release issued earlier this month, the company said it has moved the assembly line that was operated by Emivest Aerospace, the SJ30’s previous owner, from Martinsburg, W.Va., to Cedar City, Utah. “SyberJet has a solid operating plan to deliver new SJ30s to the world marketplace,” said Mark Fairchild, SyberJet’s general manager, in San Antonio, Texas. “As a pilot, the SJ30 is an exhilarating jet to fly. I look forward to providing more people the unique opportunity to experience the high-performance capability that SJ30 affords its owners and operators.”
The SJ30 was developed by Sino Swearingen, in Texas, and later was owned by Emivest Aerospace, based in Dubai. Emivest filed for bankruptcy protection last October, and in April, MT bought up the project for $5.2 million. The SJ30 is certified for a single pilot and typically seats five in the cabin. It cruises at up to .83 Mach at 49,000 feet, and the cabin maintains sea-level pressure up to 41,000 feet. Emivest said last year that at one point it had about 200 orders on the books for the $7.2 million jet, but many customers had canceled or delayed their orders when the economic slump set in. At least three of the SJ30 jets are flying, including one that belongs to actor Morgan Freeman.
