Giving a novice pilot the controls of a Learjet is risky.
The aircraft don't fly anything like the prop planes most noncommercial pilots train on.
They climb steeper, bank harder and move faster.
Bill Lear's first Learjet rose above Kansas in 1963, reaching 41,000 feet and hitting a speed of 605 mph.
Bill Lear's first Learjet rose above Kansas in 1963, reaching 41,000 feet and hitting a speed of 605 mph. View Enlarged Image
A lot faster.
Shaky, inexperienced hands can lose control and send the plane back to Earth, sans runway.
That possibility didn't trouble the owner — Bill Lear — when he gave investment banker Clint Allen, who had "just earned my multiengine aircraft rating," the controls of a Learjet 23 to fly most of the way on a two-hop flight from Boston to Reno, Nev.
"The 23 climbed like a fighter," Allen wrote of his experience. "I felt like we were heading for the Gulf of Tonkin."
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