General Electric flies to Washington after a week of Middle East deal-making

General Electric flew from Laurence G Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts, to Washington Dulles International Airport on Tuesday evening, a one-hour-20-minute hop in its HondaJet N120GE. The flight touches down at the end of a month in which the company’s chairman and CEO, Larry Culp, has logged heavy international itinerary — Beijing, Doha, Abu Dhabi — and now returns to the Washington-area headquarters of GE Aerospace.

The Washington arrival comes the same week that a Cincinnati Business Courier report, published May 19, detailed a second multibillion-dollar commitment secured by GE Aerospace and Boeing from Etihad Airways, following the May 14 Qatar Airways deal for more than 400 GE9X and GEnx engines. Reuters also reported on May 15 that Culp visited China's National Development and Reform Commission headquarters in Beijing during President Trump's state visit, a meeting that followed China's agreement to order 200 Boeing jets — news that directly affects General Electric as Boeing's primary engine supplier.

The recent flight log shows General Electric’s HondaJet has been unusually busy: a trip to the Albany area May 11, a swing through Alabama on May 12, a Chicago stop May 14, and a Boston-area visit May 18 before Tuesday’s Dulles arrival. For a company whose CEO oversees a post-spinout aerospace giant forecasting $10 billion in operating profit by 2028, per the Economic Club of Washington, the light-jet movements reflect the compressed calendar of a leader shuttling between diplomatic deal rooms and operational meetings in Cincinnati, Washington, and the Middle East.