Mooney_Driver wrote:
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.
That always depends who is behind that startup. If Elon Musk would have launched Eclipse with his billons of play-money we certainly would see more of them today. And the fact that a company is 70 years old and has an excellent reputation does not mean that it will live to the age of 71, especially if it swallows a bite that is a little bit too large. Ask Fokker and Dornier for example…
The bizjet market (flown by commercial crew) is a well known quantity now but I wonder if jets aimed at owner-pilots are actually a rather limited market… The Eclipse was a spectacular failure; admittedly helped by a guy who could spin a great yarn and extract money from a lot of people; not many people who knew the business thought the numbers would ever add up. The Mustang has sold less than Cessna hoped, too. The success of the Cirrus jet won’t be known for years. I reckon the numbers of people who are smart enough (or just in the right place) to get the money and have the determination to climb up the long path to acquiring all the papers and pilot a jet are simply not big enough to make this market sector viable. I have a CPL/IR and could have got an ATP but at 60 would I want to bite off this much, even if I had 10M in the bank? No way. And e.g. most TBM owners are in this age group!
But Pilatus are not going for that market. Is the Pilatus jet single pilot certified? Even if it is, most owners will have a 2-pilot paid crew. If it is SP, that creates extra flexibility for positioning flights.
Peter wrote:
but I wonder if jets aimed at owner-pilots are actually a rather limited market
I think it is a big market particularly in the US but it is finite. Also the aircraft are typically not used anywhere near as much as charter aircraft so on that basis they don’t need to be replaced as much.
With the Mustang I believe Cessna felt that they exhausted the market and wanted to focus on the more mixed use M2 which can do basic charter and owner pilot. The Mustang is really only usable commercially for European air taxi due to payload.
I would argue it’s the 2 crew market that’s suffering. Look at Learjet – they lost their whole lunch and missed the boat on SP jets. Cessna, Embraer own that now and they have a very dim future. Look at Controller, they can’t give old 2 crew jets away.
Peter wrote:
But Pilatus are not going for that market. Is the Pilatus jet single pilot certified?
Yes it is aimed to be. The idea is to have an upgrade available for the PC12 which also is SP certified. And the very definition of the PC24 was that it should be capable of using the same infrastructure as the PC12 can, which in theory means it can go into small grass strips and operate in very rugged terrain. A lot of PC12’s are operating in such roles, such as flying to mountain airfields or medium sized grass fields regularly, the most notorious one being Locher field in Italy. Whether in the end the PC24 really can operate into such extreme places will remain to be seen but that was the idea.
So you are right, they are aiming for a different market but one which has lapped up all their PC12’s they could get of the manufacturing line faster than they could build them. I’d think there is a good chance that the same will happen with the PC24. It will be interesting to see however if the new owners will correctly appreciate this jet which is a different beast still than a turboprop… so if we shall see PC24’s in Courchevel or on italian UL fields and live to tell the story is a different question.
Looks unreal.
Why don’t they worry about dirt and grit getting sucked into those engines? Seems like an obvious risk, although I must be wrong somehow…
These engines are mounted fairly high to mitigate the problem, and they may also be outfitted with engine air particle separators – a thing relatively uncommon on aeroplanes, but much more common on helicopters.
Wow! Less than 900m and built for unpaved strips. A friend with a Bonanza wouldn’t use a strip like that. The ultimate personal GA aircraft? I wonder what its load capability is compared to a PC-12.
Howard wrote:
Why don’t they worry about dirt and grit getting sucked into those engines? Seems like an obvious risk, although I must be wrong somehow…
I’m sure they worried a lot about that during design and found an acceptable solution.
