9 thoughts on “Article comparing very light jets”

  1. I don’t have that kind of money, but I do like lots of room and useful load (which is why I’m flying a P32R-300 now), so I think a PC-12 is a great plane. And the PT-6 is an incredibly reliable engine that you can get service for anywhere in the world.

  2. True. I may end up sharing a PC-12 with a friend (he has a wife and 2.5 kids), though on most of my flights I don’t know what I would do with all of the space in the back.

  3. Doesn’t the hourly cost of operation scare you? Turbines are great, don’t get me wrong, but unless you are very wealthy or get phenomenal consulting gigs that hourly cost is gonna hurt.

  4. Peter: It is true that firing up a jet engine unless it is for a very lucrative business trip is kind of painful. On the other hand, with a standard piston airplane it isn’t possible to go anywhere, take anyone, or keep to a schedule in the face of the most minor bad weather (e.g., a thin cloud deck in the winter). And I think that it is possible that a single-engine turbine wouldn’t be that much more expensive than something like a Malibu, which is always eating cylinders, engines, landing gear pumps, etc. Finally there is the possibility of partnership, spreading the fixed costs enough that the total cost per hour is under $1000. Figure that you fly 250 hours per year and that is a $250k/year expense.

  5. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the TBM850, with speed comparable to most of the VLJ’s, and a longer range, it has the potential to be faster point to point that the eclipse or mustang, at least on trips with a reasonable load of people and 1000nm or so. I’ll give you the fact that the lack of available glass is an issue, but they must be working towards upgrading…

    Operating costs should be much less.

    The other wildcard I’d put into the mix is the spectrum. I know it’s a new company that crashed their prototype…but the man behind the operation, Linden Blue, has a history of producing technologically advanced aircraft (the beech starship was his…great airplane that failed due to it’s novel technology…). If you believe their hype, it’ll be 415 kts for a range of 2000 nm, with a cost of 3.6. http://spectrum.aero/media/Spectrum_Independence_Specs.pdf

  6. I first heard about VLJs in James Fallows’ book Free Flight. I’d love to see a little more history on this one, Philip – if you’ve you’ve read Fallows’ book, it might be useful to bridge between where we are today and when his book left off.

    In particular, the story about the Williams company jet was a large part of Fallows’ book, so the fact that P&W replaced Williams was news to me. (Shows you how much I follow the field.)

  7. Phil,
    Still working on being in that club. Remember also that (and this applies to high performance pistons as well) you will need to devote time for recurrent training. What you are saying is one of the sad realities. At this point, if you want the reliability, speed, and comfort of a turbine you are looking at that kind of yearly outlay. But even a decent piston single isn’t cheap, I have heard numbers in the $200/hr range when all is tallied. And that’s for a capable yet not superb IFR machine. The friend with the new G-1000 Mooney simply doesn’t want to talk (or think) about it.

    What seems like a big gap now is bound to close at more turbines enter the market. Breaking the 300 knot barrier sure would add a lot of utility, then consider the power to de-ice, pressurization to get over the weather…

  8. 32Papa: I test-flew the TBM 850 and wrote it up in this Weblog. Compared to the Pilatus, I think the plane is a very bad value. The hourly operating cost is very similar, but the interior noise of the TBM is much higher and the payload/cabin of the Pilatus PC-12 is 3X more useful. The TBM is a good machine for two people + bags who don’t mind a lot of noise.

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