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Things certainly change over a year. A year ago the turboprop and jet segments seemed locked in a contest to see which could fall furthest in shipment declines. At the third milepost of the year in 2010, the turboprops prevailed slightly, down 20.8 percent (to the 20.3 percent drop the jet segment experienced), and at the year’s final milestone propjets ended down 17.7 percent to the jets’ relatively smaller plunge of 12.3 percent.

Among the wonders of jet aircraft is how the past decade helped bring about a trend that’s the reverse of the typical: the development of ever-smaller jets. Through much of the age of purpose-built business jets the preponderance of development focused on making business jets incrementally larger and more expensive to own and operate.

Every industry starts with a product that proves the concept. If a market works normally, the pioneer isn’t alone in the field for long as imitators and interlopers seek entry into the field. Soon, other inventive types seek to enlarge the market again with products that grow and expand on what the originals offered to do – and things continue to get bigger. In the case of the following category, however, sometimes they get smaller.

The beauty of the Medium Jet category is deep and wide – deep in choices, wide in capabilities. Consequently, we’ve divided our review of the Medium Jet category into two. Last month we featured jets from Bombardier, Cessna and Dassault, and this month we review jets in the Medium category from Embraer, Gulfstream and Hawker Beechcraft.

People love choices, don’t they? You need look only at the amazing variety of choices we enjoy in our everyday products and consumables to prove the point. Operators of business aircraft find many excellent options too small or capable of too little of what they need; of course other choices are, conversely, too large and far exceeding the needs – or budgets – of the would-be user. Like a flock of Goldilocks, what most business aircraft users tend to embrace fits “just right”… such is the root of

Whether the company employs one or hundreds, the best business aircraft choice is the airplane best suited to fulfill the need identified by the company – at a cost that keeps the airplane an asset, not a liability.

Within the first part of our Light and Very Light Jet Review(September issue of World Aircraft Sales Magazine, p98), we looked at Light and Entry Level Jet offerings - both certified and en route to certification - from Bombardier, Cessna, Cirrus and Diamond Aircraft.

For nearly six decades, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual gathering has been a bastion of the homebuilding movement that spawned the association’s creation in 1953. The evolution of the EAA’s signature gathering, AirVenture Oshkosh, however, today makes it a showcase for the entire spectrum of general aviation, from the simplest homebuilt airplane to sophisticated kit-built turbine- powered planes – business jets included.

Nothing is bigger than the medium jet when it comes to same-class hangar-mates. What a crowded class reunion it would be if you collected examples of all the medium jets going back to the beginning (and arguably the Lockheed JetStar of the late 1950s).

The jet broker looked straight ahead at the collection of business jets gathered on static display a few months back and smiled: “Look at all of them – a variety of choices beyond all belief,” a sentenced uttered as a sigh of admiration. “If this was a restaurant you couldn’t find a treat missing from the menu.