achimha wrote:
That is less than what you pay per year to fix non working cockpit lights. You would spend less money per year buying a significantly more expensive jet built post year 2000. A Citation from 1978 will give you huge maintenance bills and a lot of AOG. The engines will be fine but the avionics and the empennage will give you a lot of trouble.
I have to take your word for it as personally I have no experience with airframes of that size. I only have one acquaintance who flies an even older Citation 501 single pilot and he told me a few years back that he is more than happy with it and has very few issues. He is not flying it much (maybe 150 hrs per year) but sais he would not change it for anything.
What I like about this particular combination of airframe/engine is the versatility. It can do 2000 NM when necessary and it can do half of that with ease and in about 2.5 hours and quite a bit of payload. With the F44’s the consumption is a lot less than with the original engines too. The performance is really not bad:
Cruises FL370 with 383KTAS using 120GAL/800Ibs/h total.
Cruises FL410 with 375KTAS using 112GAL/750Ibs/h total.
Cruises FL430 with 364KTAS using 96GAL/640Ibs/h total.
Now: Would I spend some 3 million for a much more expensive jet or buy this one for the advertized 800k $ and use the rest to fly it, if I had this budget?
Same discussion we’ve had over other older airframes vs new and shiny. Do I buy a 50k vintage Mooney or a recent SR22 if I have the budget to buy both outright. My answer would still be the same: buy for half your budget and use the rest to fly the airplane.
BTW, I was told as well that maintenance would eat up my savings from my 52 year old plane, well, it has not happened so far and hopefully it won’t in the future. Not once have I had a maintenance bill which went over normal expense and there are no recurring 10k repacks e.t.c. either.
But anyhow, as I said, it’s my Euromillion pipe dream…. and then money does not matter that much anymore :)
achimha wrote:
Come on Michael, you know very well that nobody needs A&Ps and IAs, it’s just a money making scheme…
Yeah, no argument about that, but fuel seems to be a requirement, nonetheless. 
Come on Michael, you know very well that nobody needs A&Ps and IAs, it’s just a money making scheme…
There was this Mexican criminal that bought a Lear 24D from the museum of Altenrhein in Switzerland and flew it with a fake German registration without having a pilot license or a CofA or maintenance for quite some time until he mad a mistake with managing the fuel tanks. The guy was even advertising flights on a pilot forum and posting his trip logs on Youtube. So that proves that if you get the engine started, the plane is fine The guy only got a 10 month sentence.
https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20120915-0
That’s even more “mojo” and “can do attitude” than Adam…
achimha wrote:
What it really means — the cost of capital is extremely low at the moment and people in the market for a super high running cost device such as a Citation 1 would also have capital and quickly come to the conclusion that a more expensive airplane would be cheaper. Who is left for an airplane like this is people who don’t know what they’re doing and businesses without access to capital that try to get a return with minimal investment and will most likely fail due to AOG and negative cash flow due to high maintenance costs.
There it is folks, in easy to understand plain english why you should NOT even THINK about that Legacy Lear Jet that’s listed for less than a lowly 172
Ahh, lombard. Then yes.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
I want to know who gives out non-amortizing loans at 2%… I’d sign up immediately.
Depends a bit on the currency of course, less so in Zimbabwe Dollars, more so in Swiss Francs. Obviously that would require posting collateral. I have recently taken a non-amortizing EUR loan from my bank at Euribor + 50 base points (that would be 0.225% interest as of today) by posting a higher yielding investment as collateral — to pay for a tax debt. A Citation 1 would not considered as collateral in its full amount but if you have other assets (such as your house), you can get loans for nothing really.
What it really means — the cost of capital is extremely low at the moment and people in the market for a super high running cost device such as a Citation 1 would also have capital and quickly come to the conclusion that a more expensive airplane would be cheaper. Who is left for an airplane like this is people who don’t know what they’re doing and businesses without access to capital that try to get a return with minimal investment and will most likely fail due to AOG and negative cash flow due to high maintenance costs.
I want to know who gives out non-amortizing loans at 2%… I’d sign up immediately.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
relatively affordable jet
You have to look at “affordable” differently. A purchase price of $1m with virtually no depreciation (such aircraft have bottomed out) financed at 2% interest rate means $20k per year. That is less than what you pay per year to fix non working cockpit lights. You would spend less money per year buying a significantly more expensive jet built post year 2000. A Citation from 1978 will give you huge maintenance bills and a lot of AOG. The engines will be fine but the avionics and the empennage will give you a lot of trouble.
There are many flying entrepreneurs in Germany, probably a lot more than anywhere in Europe. Look at all the iron in the hangars of the dozens of rural airfields all over the country. It’s usually the same story: owner run manufacturing company opened production sites in other countries and the aircraft is used to commute. Until a few years ago, Germany used to exempt such flights from fuel taxes (“Werksverkehr”). Just the other day I talked to the owner of a manufacturing company that owns 3 JetProps and a TBM, used to travel from the middle of nowhere in Germany to the middle of nowhere in the Czech Republic and one JetProp in the US where they have another production facility. A company nobody has ever heard about and yet they’re the world market leader in what they do. Typically such people don’t produce Youtube videos.
Rest assured Adam, there are still hundreds of private pilots flying themselves around for business in Europe. Granted, they are not in the thousands, but hundreds definitely. The reasons have been explained at the beginning of this thread.
Also, you will see few of them on youtube because only one out of 100 pilots does regular vlogging on that. Actually, I would say that the more “serious” a pilot is about his flying (i.e. business), the less likely he will be constantly vlogging about it.
One relatively affordable jet with quite a range is the Cessna Citation ISP FJ44 Eagle II Long Wing Eagle Conversion, particularly if it has the additional fuel tanks. That particular airplane will do almost 2000 NM non-stop. That is my personal Euromillion pipe dream, if I ever won that lottery big time, I’d be on the lookout for one of them.
Currently there is one for sale on planecheck.
Of course also this flying gas tank has a negative payload if you load all tanks to capacity. But with the normal 678 USG range is still in the 1700 NM range with 2 on board. And with the full 798 USG capacity filled, it may be the only transatlantic single pilot jet available even if it will be some 400 kgs over gross at the time of departure…
