Before Gulfstream acquired Galaxy Aerospace in 2001, Gulfstream simply referred to the very top of the private jet market, the Ritz-Carlton of private jets, the Rolls Royce of business jets; take your choice.

Those signature oval windows made a Gulfstream easy to spot from the other side of the runway.

The start wasn’t what the OEM hoped. “Bombardier’s challenge to Gulfstream’s dominance of the market for large corporate jets was fraught with perils that would show up on early-production aircraft nearly 10 years later. Interior completions took way too long; water, sanitation, and fuel lines froze; and the avionics system annoyed pilots with myriad erroneous engine-indication-and-crew-alerting-system (EICAS) messages-garbage CAS, in pilot lingo,” Mark Huber wrote in Business Jet Traveler back in 2011.

However, times change, and Canadian manufacturer Bombardier Business Aircraft has, over the past two decades, firmly positioned its Global Express family of ultra-long-haul private jets as a fierce rival to Gulfstream.

The first in the line – the Bombardier Global Express (BD-700) was announced in October 1991. It was officially launched on December 20, 1993. The first flight was on October 13, 1996. In 1998 it received Canadian (July) and US (November) certifications. Customer deliveries started in 1999.

The Global Express has a range of up to 6,000 nautical miles (6,904 miles) and a maximum cruise speed of Mach 0.89.