Are single pilot jets safe?

“Whereas somebody who e.g. wants to fly to lots of places in Switzerland will buy a TBM or a PC12”

Most places in Switzerland you’d fly to for business have ILS already :)

My own view is there is no huge difference between the workload as a single pilot in a high performance turboprop or a VLJ.

The jet will have the advantage of an extra engine, higher cruise altitudes and faster cruise speeds, but greater all round technical complexity with concomitant higher maintenance costs,and for a pilot with no key experience will require expensive transition training just to be comfortable. Insurance companies may well impose yet more stringent requirements.

The turboprop has the disadvantages of one engine, lower cruising altitudes and TAS, but is simpler, cheaper, and easy to transition to with current TP experience.

Runway performance is a significant input too – just because the book says a jet will do it (unfactored) doesn’t mean it’s a great idea.

PC12s are wonderful aircraft all round. One of my colleagues used to operate one for a charter op all over Europe so if you’re interested in one I could put you in touch?

Most places in Switzerland you’d fly to for business have ILS already

Quite a few places with significant bizjet activity don’t have one and won’t ever get one due to terrain, eg. Gstaad, Samedan, Sion. (maybe they’ll get GNSS approaches in the far future once FOCA overcomes its general fear of GPS)

Others, like Lugano, do have a non-standard ILS (6°) which is strictly authorization required for both crew and aircraft, read they rather send you into cumulus granitus with a localizer only approach instead of allowing you to use the existing ILS without a paperwork war.

Lugano yes, but I suspect not many of the Gstaad and Samedan flights are business trips. La Chaux de Fonds which is a business destination has one.

Gstaad: This guy and friends from the Formula One circus

Samedan: read the accident reports for the last couple of years…

I bet you cannot know which flights are for business and which are for leisure, and which are a combination of the two.

What you can know is the types of aircraft that frequent an airport, that’s why I wrote bizjet.

Coming back to the original question “are single pilot jets safe?” a few more thoughts:

The aircraft themselves are very safe, at least the ones from the last ten years (some older SP versions of the Citation I and II are ergonomically sub-optimal to put it mildly and come with a very high workload for the pitot – but they are disappearing fast.)

A well trained pilot with 500 hours TT (and IR of course and some all-weather experience) should be able to handle such an aeroplane well. “Well trained” for me means a proper two-week type-rating course done with a good training provider. Training done on type is almost totally useless with this kind of aircraft. An engine fire or a total electrical blackout or a low-level windshear recovery – about the three most serious emergencies – can not be simulated realistically in the real plane. But when they happen, they will kill you if not trained well.

From my experience (not my own, but whatching s**t happen around me) the most dangerous bits about (privately) operating an SP jet are:

- Operations outside the envelope. These little planes are extremely capable. But unlike an airliner, they are not built to carry a full payload over the full range. However the performance to achieve that is there and people get away doing it as long as the runways are big enough and the engines are both working. Take away one of those two (500m of runway or one engine) and the accident/incident is there. Plenty of overruns and hard landings in the accident statistics.

- An extreme form of “get-home-itis” – probably triggered by the high price of owning and operating such aeroplanes “I paid five millions for that plane and another 1500 for every hour so it better takes me where I want to go and when I want to go” – lead to the kind of CFIT accidents that have been eliminated from commercial multicrew operations twenty years ago.

And finally …

… The jet will have the advantage of an extra engine, higher cruise altitudes and faster cruise speeds …

… leads to my greatest concern regarding SP operation of light jets: The combination of high levels and speed put an enormous workload on the pilot in case of a severe malfunction or emergency. In some cases more than one person can handle. A total electrical failure above FL 400 in bad weather with all systems falling back to either manual operation of total failure, no navigation capability and only 30 minutes of power left for the standby instruments is more than an average pilot (even a well trained commercial one) can safely handle. And for me, this operation inside the “death zone” above FL 250 is the main difference between turboprop and jet operations. And why I, personally, am not very keen to fly single pilot jets.

Jason, please tell us more about your reasons to step up from the Meridian. Are you looking for more speed or more cabin size, or both?

If the FAA / EASA are prepared to certify a jet for single crew operation, then clearly it is considered safe for it to be operated by a single pilot.

That having been said, any aircraft is only as safe as the pilot flying it, but this applies to a Piper Cub as much as it does to a light jet and either, in the wrong hands can be an accident waiting to happen.

I hold a single crew C525 type rating and I fly the CJ range (including the CJ4) single crew. I used to fly King Airs single crew. Once you get used to the extra speed, I’d say that any member of the CJ range is probably less of a handful to fly than a King Air and certainly an engine failure is far less of an event in the jet.

I’ve flown with owner pilots in both jets and turbo props. Some are extremely competent, others, less so. The biggest issue for most of them is currency. They tend to be busy people (which is how they came to be wealthy enough to afford to run a nice aeroplane) and many of them whilst ‘potentially’ competent enough, are not just current enough to be flying a jet – especially single crew. The smart ones realise this and will take a safety pilot.