Just like a Mooney! No pun intended…210Kts for two is such a Mooney mission!
There was a study of 2 years worth of Mustang flights in the USA and the vast majority were less than 450nm.
Certainly in the USA. Most towns of any size have a runway there. Flying over the USA (even in an airliner) is an eye-opener.
As a result for example there are loads of little bizjet charter ops, all over the place.
Europe is very different – unless you are based centrally and fly centrally.
210Kts for two is such a Mooney mission!
Except that to get 210kt you need
There aren’t any civilian certified SEPs that do 200kt in non-oxygen (actually non-mask) altitudes. These speeds are just a salesman trick.
Lets face it, we are limited by our bladders.
I know we have done this topic already but do you really fly without a provision for a pee? I can hardly think of something more dangerous.
Peter, my hat is off to you if you actually do very many 5 hour + flights. These must be in the last 1% of all GA flights.
The thought of turning around to passengers (especially my wife) and saying, it is going to be 7 hours instead of 5 doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Answer from her “No and I am filing for divorce when we land” (;
3 hours is about the max most people feel comfortable in a smaller airplane, 4 hours at a push but no longer.
If I have a 4 hour+ destination, I will usually break it up with 2 legs and give people a chance to stretch their legs etc.
Yes, I fly with an emergency pee option but so far have not used it. Close a few times (Biggin to Cannes)
Peter wrote:
Nobody wants to abandon a flight and land in some god forsaken hellhole of an airport (i.e. most airports) just because it’s going to take longer.
The assumption that the majority of airports are “god forsaken hellholes” and that an enroute fuel stop is to be avoided at any cost is a very special Peter-opinion I would say
If I did 5h planned flights that turn into 7h flights, neither my family nor 80% of my acquaintances would fly with me anymore. Also there are plenty of efficient fuel stops all across Europe, especially when you’re in need of Jet A-1.
How do you guys get to plan for 5 hours and end up flying 7 hours?
If I plan 5 hours, I fly 5 hours…Notice I said I and not WE.
WE don’t fly 5 hours…no…WE fly max 4 hours if the destination is really interesting.
BTW, I hate stopping on the way, I sometimes say I might but I never do.
Wind? (moving air :-)), detours because of weather? … although 5-7 is a bit extreme ….
davidfabry wrote:
How do you guys get to plan for 5 hours and end up flying 7 hours?
If the headwind is much stronger than forecast. You can often get 70kt instead of 30kt. With a plane doing 300kt this is obviously less relevant, but sometimes an airport may be below minima (which hopefully you find out well before you get there, over a satphone link) and you need to change the destination.
There is a more fundamental issue here, which is to do with aspirations. You can do market research etc and discover that nobody flies more than (say) 200nm. So, you say, let’s develop a jet which has a range of 300nm. Everybody will buy it, won’t they? There are a number of gotchas with that, obviously, which are well known by old market research people e.g.
An absolute classic happened many years ago in my field (electronics) when some morons market researchers asked a lot of design engineers what supply voltages they used. Most (correctly) replied 5V and 12V. So this company (then part of ITT) brought out a power supply which did 5V and 12V. Everybody else was doing variable ones, say 0-25V. Sales were zero.
If you are running a charter business then you may well buy a plane with a 300nm range if all your customers want just 200nm. But GA is very much to do with aspirations, and trade-ups are heavily aspiration-driven, not rationally-driven. Especially, dare I say it, in certain markets. In Europe, and I know this is a controversial statement to many , many desirable places are not exactly central… sometimes quite a lot of range is needed.
You also have to ask yourself how Socata sells so many TBMs at such a high price. And to the USA, too, where both the range and the short field capability are usually wasted.
Based on the GAMA report, Socata has sold an average of 39 TBM’s per year for the last 15 years. That is very good but not really a big number of airplanes.(and it is a beautiful and extremely capable airplane) Yes the range is probably not used very much but the payload and high speed make it a very good choice for people who can afford the purchase price.
The range is probably used more in Europe but it is probably speed and payload that win the day.
I was kidding a bit on the planning….However, to share, I find planning tools such as Jeppesen Flight star to be extremely accurate when it comes to wind forecast. It is to the minute even on long legs and more remote areas.
I use others which are far less accurate so I keep my flightstar (even if it is not available on MAC OS which what I use)
