I am wondering, too because if I understood Jason correctly, range was the main issue with the Meridian and from what I gathered, the Mustang is not an improvement in that area. Cruise speed is better but at a much higher fuel flow and operating cost.
I understand that headwind will be much less of a problem with higher speed.
In other words, range will not suffer as much when facing contrary winds.
OTOH, the higher you fly the more headwind you get!
Very nice, Jason. Did you already have your ME IR or did you just do that too?
I guess Jason did his maths ! :-)
Yes it works for my missions and definitely is quicker and has meaningfully more range than the Meridian. Not as much range as a TBM but I just decided not to go that route.
I’m sure he did. As always, it depends on the type of flights one does (‘mission profile’ as its elegantly called). We’ve read from time to time about his cross-European flights and got an idea of the flying he does, but that’s why I’d like to hear his main reason for stepping up. We all know Mustangs are faster, fly higher, cooler in general 
but there are of course trade-offs: cost in general 
, rwy lenghts required (ok, we all know you can cram them into short ones but still not for the prudent), bigger hangar needs to be available, etc etc. But that’s why I’m interested in understanding the main reason for stepping up.
Still utra cool he was able to make it!
Sorry, crossed posts, see he just shared his view.
Thanks JasonC!
If the range is sufficient and the fuel burn acceptable, the Mustang seems like a great buy. What puzzles me is why it is considerably cheaper than a TBM even though it is much more complex, has two turbofans instead of one PT6, more systems, etc. Seems like there is more competition in the VLJ than the high end SET market. The TBM seems overpriced, about 30% above the Mustang in the used market.
What I would be interested in is what it takes as a private owner pilot to fly such an aircraft safely. How much more training/currency does it required compared to a Meridian? What’s the cockpit workload? Obviously the runway requirements mean that it will go to better equipped airports mostly.
How much more fuel do you anticipate for your typical mission compared to the Meridian?
The TBM seems overpriced, about 30% above the Mustang in the used market.
I think this comes from all those start-up businesses who believed that a fleet of VLJs offering “cheap” air-taxi services would hit the charter market like a bomb. Only to find out that there is no way to make a profit in this sector utlising such small planes. Their failures flooded the market with low-time used Mustangs and Eclipses. One of these companies wasn’t based far from here, the sad thing about it is that a good student of ours is since unemployed and has a typerating that is near useless in the commercial sector. And the self-fling owners at which these aeroplanes are targeted don’t usually need pilots.
Peter wrote:
OTOH, the higher you fly the more headwind you get!
Until you reach the stratosphere where winds are usually very weak, often less than 10KT. On tuesday this week we had the tropopause at FL300 over Germany, can’t remember such low levels. You could almost have flown stratospheric in your TB20
But I can’t repeat often enough: Don’t rely on those flight levels when doing your range calculations in central Europe. Two weekends ago, I had three consecutive trips to Le Mans (guess why…). A 1:15 hour trip. Best flown around level 400 with our aeroplane. But on those six sectors, the highest the French would allow was 310 and only with a lot of begging to stay above some turbulence. On two of the flights they wouln’t let us fly higher than 220.
