The Learjet 23 first flew in 1963 and became one of the aircraft most associated with private business jet travel. It offered speed and flexibility to corporations and wealthy individuals. The design helped create a new social image of executive mobility and airborne privilege.

The business jet entered satire, fiction, and song as a sign of wealth, acceleration, and distance from ordinary life. It sharpened literary contrasts between grounded communities and the mobile elites of late capitalism.