Bombardier is turning to the world of haute couture to redefine luxury aviation, unveiling a landmark collaboration with Lebanese fashion house ELIE SAAB for the cabin design of its upcoming Global 8000 – set to be the world’s fastest and longest-range purpose-built business jet.
The move marks the first time the Canadian manufacturer has partnered with a couture brand to design an aircraft interior.
The Global 8000, entering service later this year with a range of 8,000 nautical miles and a top speed of Mach 0.95, will feature a bespoke cabin shaped by ELIE SAAB’s design language.
Design teams worked closely on fabrics, textures for 2026 launch
“We’ve been discussing this for a year, and anything you do in aviation is extremely complicated, right? And I’ve learned that through this project,” Ève Laurier, Vice President, Communications, Marketing and Public Affairs at Bombardier told Lana in an exclusive interview.
“You think, ‘ELIE SAAB wishes to design a Bombardier aircraft’ – sure, it’s easy, but no. When you want to push the boundaries of what you can do in an aircraft, especially a private aircraft, it takes a lot of time.”
Speaking on the side lines of the Dubai Airshow 2025, Laurier said the collaboration has been “amazing,” with both design teams working closely on fabrics, textures, and the overall cabin vision.
“The collaboration has been amazing. Their [ELIE SAAB’s] design team and our design team have been looking at fabrics, and you will see it in March – we will show what it is that we’re creating, and how they see the interior of a business aircraft. We were able to agree on what it should be about a week ago and ELIE SAAB jumped on a plane from Beirut, flew in this morning, and we announced it – also because we’re way too excited,” she said.
The partnership merges Bombardier’s engineering precision with ELIE SAAB’s couture-driven approach to form, texture, and atmosphere, creating an interior meant to feel both refined and deeply personal.
When asked why ELIE SAAB was the designer of choice, Laurier pointed to an immediate creative chemistry during early discussions. “When we met with ELIE SAAB, he told us what the company is doing inside yachts and real estate – huge projects with furniture and interior decoration and all of that – and we realised we have so much in common. You know when you meet somebody and the DNA just clicks? There was no screening process; it was simply, we need to do this project together,” she said.
“It has been an incredible collaboration. I feel like we’re two families becoming one family now. We really got along, and we learned from them; they learned from us. We’re coming out of this – not more intelligent, I think we already were – but definitely grown, inspired, and excited. It was a beautiful opportunity, and we just jumped on it,” she added.
As Laurier mentioned, the design will be unveiled in 2026 and made available for purchase by Global 8000 customers, who will have the option to select the ELIE SAAB interior as an alternative to standard configurations.
“This is their first aircraft project, and for us, it’s good to show the world how agile our configuration can be and how much we can do with the interior of the aircraft, because one of our DNA is to be very innovativee,” she said.
Bombardier VP reveals engineering innovation behind ultra-long-range aircraft
In a separate conversation with Lana at the Dubai Airshow, Stephen McCullough, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Product Development at Bombardier, explained how the Global 8000 was quite literally built from the inside out.
For him, the aircraft’s performance, comfort, and technological breakthroughs all trace back to the same starting point: customer requirements.
“I think that when we design things, it all comes down to having sets of requirements. And what we’ve really focused on now is, what are the customer requirements? And so if you treat customer requirements with the same diligence that you treat for worthiness, certification requirements, it really drives the product to be one that satisfies customers,” he said.
According to McCullough, early decisions – from window spacing to seat ergonomics – were dictated by how passengers would feel inside the cabin.
“And so if you look at the design of this aircraft… it was really about the customer inside the aircraft,” he added. “The cabin management system, it was really designed to give the ultimate experience to the customer.”
The Global 8000 is not only the fastest purpose-built business jet on the market; it also offers one of the smoothest ride experiences thanks to Bombardier’s advanced wing design. The aircraft recently achieved certification, allowing the engineering team to push the boundaries even further.
“We were able to then take it even further and do things like have the aircraft have even the lowest cabin altitude so the customer arrives with a sense of well-being,” McCullough explained. “We’re able to increase the range so the customer can fly further.”
One of the defining technologies behind the Global 8000’s performance is its wing – a component Bombardier has refined across three decades and more than 30 aircraft programmes.
“One of our key areas of expertise is in wing design,” McCullough said. “And if you look at an aircraft like the Global 8000, really the wing does most of the hard work.”
Designing that wing was as much an engineering challenge as it was an exercise in human-centric thinking, he added.
“In addition to all the airworthiness stuff, we wanted a flexible wing that would actually ensure that customers had the smoothest ride,” he noted.
Bombardier’s teams spent extensive time in the wind tunnel optimising the flaps, slats, and leading edges. The result is a wing that can fly exceptionally fast yet land at remarkably slow speeds – providing both range and agility.
The Global 8000 features the lowest cabin altitude in the industry and can operate from short runways in all weather conditions.
“We always talk about no compromise,” McCullough said. “We have a very fast wing, a slow wing when we want it, and we also have a very flexible wing. And so that gave the engineers quite a few headaches, but that’s good.”
Despite the complexity of the programme, McCullough describes the development process as highly collaborative – not just within Bombardier, but across a global network of partners including GE and Collins Aerospace.
“One of the most interesting parts of designing an aircraft like this is to have teams working to the same goal,” he said. “And I think that’s one of the successes of aircraft like this is that everybody feels it’s their aircraft.”
For McCullough, one of the biggest professional rewards is seeing the aircraft perform during flight testing – long before it enters service.
“It is so nice to see the higher speed of the aircraft during the flight test,” he said, adding that “now that we’re certified – we share it with more people, and they’ll get to enjoy it.”
Bombardier sees the Middle East as a key region for the Global 8000, especially as excitement builds around both the upcoming ELIE SAAB interior reveal and the aircraft’s entry into service.
“We’re really excited to see this aircraft in this region,” McCullough said.
“We hope to see many more in the region. And I think that this air show just really… what a brilliant region for an aircraft that has the longest range,” he concluded
