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NBAA-BACE kicked off media day today with a marquee name, Gulfstream president Mark Burns, who has been missing since 2019, when Gulfstream announced the G700. With a pair of new aircraft in development, the G300 and G400, his message was clear, Gulfstream's goal is to build a jet for every customer, regardless of mission. It was clear that concerns about market volatility and supply chain issues were the farthest thing from his mind. "Demand is not the concern right now," Burns said when asked whether economic and geopolitical worries were reaching his order book. Customers bring up the economy constantly, he said. "It's top of mind for every customer that I deal with." He described a buyer base that has evolved and grown since he started at Gulfstream, when it was "basically the Fortune 100 of the United States and Europe." Now, he said, "it's everywhere," with a younger demographic and more wealthy individuals. "The current boom in AI has created some opportunities that we haven't seen before." Burns tied the optimism to productivity. "Productivity in aviation has been incremental for my 45 years," he said. "We're getting a little better. But I believe we're at a point now where we can get a lot better in every facet." He listed three: developing, building and servicing airplanes. Gulfstream's case for 200 airplanes a year Gulfstream will build 160 airplanes this year, Burns said, "but we will build more in the future." Asked whether the company could reach 200 aircraft a year, he answered, "I think we're well on that path." Then: "Barring any unforeseen catastrophe, I think it's inevitable." The evidence he offered was on the factory floor. Gulfstream took wing production in-house in 2014, and Burns said "almost every hole is robotically drilled now." Errors that once took "hours and hundreds of hours to correct" a decade ago have largely disappeared, he said, and the line "allows us to build more airplanes and more efficient factories." Gulfstream has grown from 900 employees the year he started to "close to 25,000 people now," and has delivered 34 G800s in less than a year. Burns wants faster certification and says suppliers can keep up Certification is where he wants change. Gulfstream has certified the G500, G600, G700 and G800 in the last seven years, Burns said. The G700, which began development in earnest in 2018, lost time to COVID before it was certified in 2024. "I was probably the most vocal person on the planet during the 700 about my dissatisfaction with the certification process," he said. The G800, by contrast, "went just according to schedule." He said he has made the modernization case to the Department of Transportation. "We want to be transparent. We're trying to build the safest airplanes in the world. But we think, based on the tools we have available to us today, we can do it faster without compromising safety." Burns was careful about where the delay sits. "It's not all our schedule, it's the regulators' schedules as well," he said. He thinks current officials at the FAA and the Transportation Department "are listening to our thoughts on modernization." On supply chain and workforce, Burns says Gulfstream is bucking the challenges cited by some competing OEMs. "Like everyone, just immediately post-COVID, we had a lot of the same issues," he said. "I don't see the supply chain as limiting us today." The suppliers he has talked to "say they can keep up with us." Gulfstream expects to "vertically integrate a little bit more internally," he said, which means bringing some work in-house. Why it matters Burns's outlook is bullish. He gave no dates for the G300 and G400, only that they are coming "very soon." How fast regulators move and how well suppliers perform are the two variables Gulfstream does not fully control. For buyers with eyes on the upcoming models or an existing order in the books, those signals remain the ones to watch.