achimha wrote:
A full order book ab initio says exactly nothing, the real question is what will follow. Cessna’s Mustang is a giod example.
How so?
A project is only worthwhile if the product can be kept at a certain level for quite some time. The A380 had full order books for many more years than the PC24 today and still it is not on track to recover the initial investments. The Mustang had good production numbers initially but it faded off too quickly.
If you have 500 orders and all customers want the airplane immediately, you don’t invest to build a 500 planes per month production line. You try to find out what the likely demand will be over a much longer period and then plan your capacity and depreciation which also factors into the unit cost.
It will be very interesting to see how Cirrus Jet production vs demand develop and even more interesting to see how Tesla Model 3 will do in that regard.
achimha wrote:
A project is only worthwhile if the product can be kept at a certain level for quite some time. The A380 had full order books for many more years than the PC24 today and still it is not on track to recover the initial investments. The Mustang had good production numbers initially but it faded off too quickly.If you have 500 orders and all customers want the airplane immediately, you don’t invest to build a 500 planes per month production line. You try to find out what the likely demand will be over a much longer period and then plan your capacity and depreciation which also factors into the unit cost.
It is interesting. 2003-2016 the Mustang outsold all othe CJ product lines (well it matched the CJ3 family). It tailed off when Textron decided to push the M2. And they share a production line.
I agree re the PC24. The PC12 sold more than twice the number of Mustangs (and nearly twice the TBMs) over that period with fairly steady sales.
All trail the King Air line though.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Already now the production is sold out for a few years. Who else in the industry has that kind of position where clients will patiently wait in line to get their airplane…
I dimly remember that Eclipse boasted to have years worth of waiting lists before their first prototype even flew… And when did I last see an Eclipse anywhere? Same with the Premier 1 and a few other types as well. Usually the aircraft reservations are free of charge initially, so lots and lots of dreamers (financially…) will sign an order for a new plane – there is nothing they can lose at that point. Only when the first deposit is due to stay on the waiting list the world will really know how many people are going ahead and actually fork out all those millions. And Cirrus may or may not have long waiting lists but they already went bankrupt once in their history – a waiting list is obviously no guarantee for a financially viable enterprise.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
They did however face a significant challenge from left wing politicians …
One does not have to be “left wing” for opposing weapon sales to unstable third world countries. “Ethical” is the correct word and there are plenty of conservatives and right wing politicians who still have such principles. Mind you, over half of the million refugees which we now have in Germany were driven out of their home countries with German weapons. It would have been much smarter, both ethically and economically!, not to sell their governments weapons in the first place. Sorry for the thread drift.
JasonC wrote:
It is interesting. 2003-2016 the Mustang outsold all othe CJ product lines (well it matched the CJ3 family). It tailed off when Textron decided to push the M2. And they share a production line.
The Mustang was designed around the owner single pilot and is therefore different from the rest of the line which makes it hard to integrate into a fleet. When that market faded out, they had two choices: invest to improve the product to create new interest (like TBM 700, 850, 900, 930) or give up. Cessna has recently been the undisputed leader in easily giving up (C162, 172 next, 182 SMA, Mustang…). I think it is quite possible that Garmin’s announcement to pull the plug on the G1000 (in favor of the Nxi) was a contributing factor because that would have required Cessna to invest.
achimha wrote:
Cessna has recently been the undisputed leader in easily giving up (C162, 172 next, 182 SMA, Mustang…)
Don’t forget the “Columbus”, their first real entry into the midsize/longrange bizjet market. No idea if there was already a waiting list at the time of cacellation.
achimha wrote:
I think it is quite possible that Garmin’s announcement to pull the plug on the G1000 (in favor of the Nxi) was a contributing factor because that would have required Cessna to invest.
Unlikely as they have just announced the NXi will be rolled out to the existing Mustang fleet.
I dimly remember that Eclipse boasted to have years worth of waiting lists before their first prototype even flew…
There is a lot of “position holder” stuff going on. There is/was a guy on here who said he held multiple positions in the Cirrus Jet. I recall some of the early Eclipse or similar positions could be bought for $100k which is nothing to many people in that bit of the market. Also IIRC an early Eclipse position gave you the right to buy the finished plane for money which barely covered the cost of the two jet engines (of the type eventually used) plus a few other bits, which made the position highly valuable even if you had zero interest in the plane itself… just so long as Eclipse didn’t go bust 
In the end, in retrospect, the Eclipse looks like a giant Ponzi scheme especially when seen in its later stages, but I have had countless conversations with “free enterprise” types who disagree strongly and say this is a free market and if you are dumb enough to invest all your money then you deserve to lose it 
So a lot of stuff isn’t what it looks like.
The weapon / non weapon posts are in the usual place
what_next wrote:
I dimly remember that Eclipse boasted to have years worth of waiting lists before their first prototype even flew… And when did I last see an Eclipse anywhere?
Actually yes . Last week there was one in ZRH and a friend of mine in Austria flies one which is based there. They are great little jets now that they are what they were supposed to be in the first place.
But comparing a US start up company with a over 70 year old company which has had a reputation for regularly exceeding specs and understating their PR stuff is comparing apples with watermelons.
