If you are good with two pilots, I think the Beechjet is something to look at. They can be had very cheap and not super expensive to operate. Rock solid platform with a flat floor that passengers like. If you want to shell out more money you can get the upgrade to williams engines or a G5000 avionics suite now also.

Nextant seems like a good operation. Flat floor too.

Sitting up there alone at FL410 are you wearing your oxygen mask? Jesus will know if you fib.

The old Westwinds are still a really good airplane with a lot of bang for the buck.

Sitting up there alone at FL410 are you wearing your oxygen mask? Jesus will know if you fib.

If your wearing the mask the 7-10 seconds isn’t a factor.

It’s not just your ears and sinuses that are painful. Your whole body tries to swell up like a poison pup. You can pass gas you didn’t know you had and it hurts. Last nights nachos will vent overboard with haste through the outflow valve and into the upper stratosphere.

What a picture!

Jesus is my copilot.

Mike C.

The definition of "rapid" is important here. If it is a few seconds, like the chamber ride is, then the time above applies. It would have to be some failure that vents the cabin extremely rapidly, like a window blows out.

The Citation cabin will rise about 2000-3000 FPM if the pressurization source is turned off (this is a maintenance test, BTW). That is, you lost pressurization but don't have a big new hole in the airplane. Now you have sufficient time to settle things, at least a minute or two which is more than enough.


You can't think.

My strategy for this is that ALL emergencies above FL280 start with "don oxygen mask". Doesn't matter what it is, why it is, etc. Do that first then deal with the emergency. A lot of the memory emergency procedures do start with "don oxygen mask" anyway, and those that don't will be aided by having oxygen to your brain. Nothing that happens at high altitude will require such immediate response that donning an oxygen mask is too much delay.


As far as anyone can remember, there has never been a true rapid depressurization of a Citation. The closest accident I know of is N804ST, a 501, that had a pressurization duct clamp give way coupled with a failure of a check valve. The cabin depressurized over 20 seconds, which is pretty fast, but still would have given time to get an oxygen mask on.

Something to ponder: my airplane can cruise at FL450. At that altitude, 85% of the atmosphere is below you. If you were to walk out the air lock on the space station, it would be only 15% worse than depressurizing at FL450. My airplane is 85% the way to outer space, and thus it is really almost a spaceship, and I respect it like one.

Mike C.

Not too long ago, one probably could have found some desperate young pilot who'd be willing to work for peanuts/a free type rating. That doesn't really exist anymore. The desperate folks are the ones hiring the pilots.

Besides Hawai'i or Europe runs, the value proposition of a crewed aircraft for most owner-operator scenarios doesn't really seem to exist. Especially because of all of the highly capable SP rides out there (like the P180).

Don't tell Signature that, I'd hate to see the ramp fees they have queued up for those

Insurance requirements aside, I would think that there is a pool of pilots that are past their MEL-I but not yet to the 1,500 or whatever hours they need for an airline job. I would think that these folks would jump at the offer of an SIC type rating that would allow them to gain turbine experience vs the usual path of CFI'ing in trainers.

For example, I did my MEL with ATP down in Arlington, TX. My instructor was awesome. Knew the Seminole inside and out and was able to quickly get me up to speed and through my checkride. However, during the 5 days that I was there, he went for his regional airline interview. He passed the interview but missed questions like "what is RVSM?" He had ZERO jet/turbine experience. He had never been in Class A airspace. Certainly he will learn it and it will be fine, but how much better would his resume look and oral go if he had jet/turbine experience?

I think the problem is as a practical matter, finding these folks and keeping them long enough to be useful is just an ongoing pain in the rear for the individual owner-operator. Scheduling when you want, coordinating travel, and so forth takes some work, and someone who’s only there short term never quite syncs up and becomes valuable enough to make it worth it.

Insurance requirements aside, I would think that there is a pool of pilots that are past their MEL-I but not yet to the 1,500 or whatever hours they need for an airline job. I would think that these folks would jump at the offer of an SIC type rating that would allow them to gain turbine experience vs the usual path of CFI'ing in trainers.

For example, I did my MEL with ATP down in Arlington, TX. My instructor was awesome. Knew the Seminole inside and out and was able to quickly get me up to speed and through my checkride. However, during the 5 days that I was there, he went for his regional airline interview. He passed the interview but missed questions like "what is RVSM?" He had ZERO jet/turbine experience. He had never been in Class A airspace. Certainly he will learn it and it will be fine, but how much better would his resume look and oral go if he had jet/turbine experience?