From the US AOPA magazine:
9 airplanes in 8 years! He cannot possibly have liked them much if he felt the urge to change that often! It will be interesting to see how often he will change his jets.
Ugh! A 500 hour pilot with loads of cash obviously who has not hung onto an airplane for more than a year so far to fly this jet? I wonder really whether this is a wise move by Cirrus to let this guy near one of their jets let alone the first one. Or does this guy run a Cirrus Club with 8 airplanes?
It appears owns five ‘positions’ on the Jet as well, so looks like he’ll be continuing the trend.
If someone wants to change their boat car plane every year and can afford to do so, then good luck to them. They’re helping everyone else by taking the mother of all depreciation hits over and over again.
Speaking of number of hours to meet a requirement, such as 500h for Cirrus Jet or TBM.
Shouldn’t hours per year be counted in or at least last for instance last 5 years of experience (optimally a formula based on total hours and last 5 year average)?
Compare a 500h pilot who accumulated his hours under 10 years, with another 500h pilot who accumulated them last 5 years. 50h a year vs 100h a year… Who is most current to fly a demanding plane?
I know a lot of older members at the club who have over 1000h hours, but they did it during 20-40 years in different periods of their life…
It appears owns five ‘positions’ on the Jet as well, so looks like he’ll be continuing the trend.
It’s a bit of a mixed blessing whether such a type is an ideal launch customer, but I suppose he does represent the ultimate “aspirational” position in the US market 
I know a lot of older members at the club who have over 1000h hours, but they did it during 20-40 years in different periods of their life
Yes… my guess is that the hours become irrelevant because you need a valid Type Rating, and to get that you need to have held a valid IR at the time. So one can’t get into a jet without some recent currency. And I bet the insurers will add a few more requirements.
They’re helping everyone else by taking the mother of all depreciation hits over and over again.
Speaking to one owner who acquired his ‘position’ as a valued early bird frequent customer, these ‘positions’ have an in the money option value of around $500k, each.
Presumably the value of positions is that if the queue is 600 planes, and you want one right now, you will pay over the list price to get it?
Plus the option may have a discount of its own, like e.g. the notorious Eclipse ponzi scheme where the early positions entitled you to get one for something like $1M.
I think the platinum type frequent customers got a substantial discount to place deposits – in effect betting on the creditworthiness of Cirrus and that management would see the design into production.
I know a guy who sold his contract for a VisionJet production number in the 30s (delivery in 2017) for $ 350 K.
