Gulfstream Beat Bombardier by One Jet in 2025, 158 to 157. The $2 Billion Gap Behind It Is the Real Story

The two makers of the world’s big business jets finished 2025 almost level on deliveries. The money tells a different story, and so does the race to build the fastest and farthest-flying private jet.

Gulfstream delivered 158 business jets in 2025 and Bombardier delivered 157, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s 2025 year-end shipment report. One jet separated the two private jet manufacturers that now split the large-cabin market between them.

The billings were not close. GAMA put Gulfstream’s 2025 deliveries at $10.01 billion and Bombardier’s at $7.94 billion, a gap of about $2.07 billion.

Together the pair billed $17.95 billion. That is 58% of the $31.0 billion GAMA counted for every general aviation airplane shipped worldwide in 2025, from two-seat trainers to the biggest business jets, while their 315 jets were 37% of the 854 business jets delivered.

Why One Jet Hides a $2 Billion Gap

The gap comes from what each company built. Of Gulfstream’s 158 deliveries, 136 were large-cabin jets from the G500 up to the G800, and only 22 were the midsize Gulfstream G280.

Bombardier’s year was split almost evenly. It delivered 86 Global jets, its long-range family, and 71 Challengers, the smaller Challenger 3500 and Challenger 650.

Divide the billings by the deliveries and the difference shows. A Gulfstream averaged about $63 million per jet in 2025, and a Bombardier about $51 million.

One caveat travels with those numbers. Gulfstream does not report its billings to GAMA, so the association estimates them from public information, including the BCA Purchase Planning Handbook. Bombardier’s figure is not marked as an estimate.

In the top class, the two are nearly the whole field. GAMA lists 267 deliveries of large-cabin business jets in 2025: Gulfstream’s 136, Bombardier’s 86 Globals, 37 Dassault Falcons and 8 Airbus corporate jets. Gulfstream and Bombardier built 222 of them, or 83%.

The 2025 Scorecard, Side by Side

The companies’ own year-end results line up with GAMA’s count. General Dynamics, Gulfstream’s parent, reported 158 deliveries on Jan. 28, 2026, and Bombardier reported 157 on Feb. 12, 2026.

2025	Gulfstream	Bombardier
Business jets delivered	158	157
Large-cabin jets	136 (G500 to G800)	86 (Global)
Smaller jets	22 (G280)	71 (Challenger)
GAMA billings	$10.01 billion (GAMA estimate)	$7.94 billion
Company revenue	$13.11 billion (GD Aerospace segment)	$9.55 billion
Backlog, Dec. 31, 2025	$21.8 billion (GD Aerospace segment)	$17.5 billion

The revenue lines are wider than the delivery billings because they include services. General Dynamics reports Gulfstream inside its Aerospace segment, which posted $13.11 billion in 2025 revenue and an order backlog of $21.8 billion at year end.

Bombardier closed 2025 with $9.55 billion in revenue, up 10%, and a $17.5 billion backlog, up $3.1 billion. Its unit book-to-bill was 1.4, meaning it took 1.4 orders for every jet it delivered.

Bombardier delivered 11 more jets than the 146 it shipped the year before, and the whole business jet market grew 11.8%, from 764 deliveries to 854.

The Flagship Duel: G800 vs Global 8000

The rivalry is sharpest at the top, where each company sells a jet built to fly farther and faster than the other’s. Gulfstream’s answer is range, and Bombardier’s is speed.

The Gulfstream G800 is rated for 8,200 nautical miles at Mach 0.85, and Gulfstream calls it the world’s longest-range business aircraft. Its larger-cabin sister, the Gulfstream G700, flies 7,750 nautical miles, and both top out at Mach 0.935.

The Bombardier Global 8000 is rated for 8,000 nautical miles with a top speed of Mach 0.95. Bombardier calls it the fastest civil aircraft since Concorde, and it entered service on Dec. 8, 2025.

Bombardier showed the margin behind that number in testing. On May 18, 2021, a test jet reached Mach 1.015 in a shallow dive.

The distance record has changed hands. On Oct. 6, 2019, a Bombardier Global 7500 flew 8,225 nautical miles (9,465 miles) from Sydney to Detroit, which Bombardier called the longest flight in business aviation.

On June 28, 2026, a G800 flew 8,303 nautical miles (9,555 miles) from Melbourne, Australia, to Moline, Illinois, in 16 hours and 56 minutes. Gulfstream claims it as the farthest and fastest flight in business aviation history, 78 nautical miles past the Global 7500’s mark.

Neither record carries an official stamp. Bombardier did not submit its 2019 flight to the National Aeronautic Association, and Gulfstream’s announcement did not mention ratification.

The speed-record count is a split decision too. Bombardier says the Global 7500 had set 150 speed records by October 2025, the most for any one business jet type, while Gulfstream says its jets of every model have set 815, 15 of them by the G800. Our ranking of the fastest private jets puts the two side by side.

Who Flies Them, and the Trade Fight Over Both

The buyers are the same crowd. Elon Musk flies a G800 and a G700, and Kylie Jenner flies a Global 7500. NetJets, the Global 8000’s fleet launch customer, took its first one on March 26, 2026, with 24 due in total.

Politics has started to shape the rivalry. On Jan. 29, 2026, President Trump threatened on Truth Social to decertify Canadian-made aircraft, Bombardier’s included, and to add a 50% tariff unless Canada certified Gulfstream’s newest jets.

Canada did. Transport Canada approved the G500 and G600 on Feb. 15 and the G700 and G800 on Feb. 23, 2026.

The fight did not end there. On Sept. 7, 2026, Trump posted that Bombardier could not sell jets in the US unless it built them there, without saying how a ban would work.

Orders have kept coming anyway. Bombardier’s backlog rose to $21.8 billion by June 30, 2026, up $4.3 billion in six months, and it has guided to at least as many deliveries in 2026 as the 157 it managed in 2025.