This topic is of recent interest to me. I felt, slight perception, that 2014 was a bad year for GA. By GA, I refer to the old General Aviation tag, which goes from a home built glider, to a G6. Too early to read the stats, but as I frequent some US forums, it appears to be all I read about. High net worth individuals, banging in on a regular basis, high end turboprops, or light jets. In fact November/ December saw a half dozen of these accidents.
It is generally their own family that they wipe out, the kids do not know any better I would assume, and you get the odd family wiped out on the ground, with the inevitable law suits following. They go for the estate of the high net worth individual.
The trait, if it is outwith AOC ops, appears to be sim check ride passed, ATPL passed, IR etc, but with low hours on type. They have also continually traded up. So start with the Corvallis say, then a Baron, then a King Air, then the PC 12 then the Mustang, all covered with minimum time.
A generalisation, but it would appear money can buy almost anything. Apart from life after death that is.
Of course there are very competent pilots out there, with money!!!!!, but I get a feeling that a complacency creeps in that they can buy safety, almost as if it should come with the £5m price tag. Unfortunately a stall is a stall, whether at 100 feet, or 28000 feet.
For me, an interesting benchmark for these new small jets is the old Falcon 10. Yes, it’s about a meter longer than the Phenom 100, it’s multi-pilot and would be much more expensive if it was available new. But it has a good payload, you should be able to fill the tanks, the seats and possibly even baggage (depends on the seating configuration and how above average your passengers are), decent range and it really flies (goes like stink would be appropriate, I think). Plus the already very nice manufacturer specs are on the conservative side.
PS: The difference, of course, comes down to the weight. Gross is more than twice that of the Mustang. But the package is not that much larger.
@ peter
Sorry, I did not try to make a Cirrus advert, but just thought the Avionics look very cool.
In future is it best to just paste a link and if there are some rules and guidlines, please let me know as this is the first time I have posted on any site.
So then post the Cirrus Jet avionics! I have not seen anything close to production.
A link to a Cirrus website would be fine because it is obvious to all that it is marketing material.
By all means post a pic of their panel with the URL under it. Then if the URL goes dead people can still see in the future what the discussion was about.
There is no clear boundary, but if someone posts where the entire posting is obviously marketing material, it looks like it was posted by the company itself.
Cirrus recently published a few “pics” of the future instrument panel. I found it very ugly.
It somehow reminded me of…. An ICE high speed train “cockpit”…
Yuck. The cockpit is just as ugly as the outside. And the thrust vector must be pretty weird from the looks of the angled engine.
Will the early birds who purchased the CJ50 before certification be able to sell them for retail? Seems a smart financial deal, if correct.
RobertL18C wrote:
Seems a smart financial deal, if correct.
The “same smart financial deal” was offered for virtually all new aircraft unless the vendor doesn’t need customer loans. More often than not, they turn out to be not that smart at all.
The CJ50 is far from a guaranteed success. The aircraft as it is does not make much sense (FL280, huge fuel burn, low speed) so it all depends on how powerful the marketing and SR22 upselling will be. If Cirrus were to start out today, they wouldn’t even consider this project for a second.
I know someone that went for the advance payment deal on an Eclipse. That didn’t turn out well.
