Embraer Legacy 500

With the Legacy 500, Embraer was clearly looking to move upstream with an airplane it hoped would enter service as the most technologically advanced midsize model available. Mission accomplished. It is without question one of the most advanced private airplanes in the world, period.

There simply is no other airplane in the 500’s price range that gives you a true wide stand-up, flat-floor cabin with all the latest luxuries, a cavernous luggage hold, smooth and full fly-by-wire digital flight controls mated to glass-panel avionics, superb short-field capability, and transcontinental range.

At first glance, the Legacy 500 looks large, and in many ways it is. The flat floor, for example, adds a spacious feel to the 826-cu-ft cabin, which is larger than that of the Citation Sovereign+ at 620 cu ft but smaller than the Challenger 300/350 at 860 cu ft and the Gulfstream G280, the largest at 935 cu ft. Of the three competitors, only the Challenger has a flat-floor cabin, and this feature seems to be gaining traction as a popular differentiator. The Challenger and G280 are the only jets with a taller cabin height than the 72 inches of the Legacy 450/500, with the Challenger offering one more inch and the G280 three more inches.