The Stratos has flight data from FL410 so no, it's not a "brochure plane". They know what it will do at those altitudes.
This is from May of 2022:

“In May, Sean Van Hatten, our chief test pilot repeatedly flew the aircraft to FL 410. We’ve now completed flight envelope expansion, flutter tests and RVSM precision altitude holding tests. We’ve also flown it as fast as 380 KTAS and verified that the aircraft is free of Mach buffet in wind-up turns at the highest cruise altitudes,”

As far as the Eclipse vs the Stratos. The Eclipse has half the useful load at full fuel. roughly 500 NM less range and is quite a bit smaller and less comfortable for passengers.

The Eclipse is more fuel efficient (if their reported numbers are true) at 6 nm/gal vs the Stratos at 4.6 nm/gal, but in the end that doesn't matter because the Stratos holds 137 gal more.

In the end, the Stratos is the better plane IMO because of the better range and load capacity. Plus, I flew an Eclipse before and it was not fun. Felt like I was arm wrestling Devon Larratt trying to do simple maneuvers. I was told you had to trim the plane to do what you wanted it to do. Not good.

Also, this isn't getting to what my original statement was about the 2 vs 1 jet engine argument. I was saying similar thrust a 1 engine plane will be more efficient. The Stratos thrust is 2900 lbs. The Eclipse thrust is 1800 lbs...

That is actually smart. Piston twin flying has little to teach you in flying a twin jet. I went directly to the MU2 and my only piston twin time was the 10 hours for the rating. I didn't have to unlearn any piston twin habits that didn't apply.


Because certification has not yet been achieved and no one has certified a single engine jet that high yet despite the obvious advantages to do so.


It can't, which increases risks. An engine which has shed parts may be so badly out of balance that having it fall off is better than retaining it inside the fuselage.


Cirrus SF50 is louder, a headset airplane. Having the biggest noise maker inside the fuselage will make it louder.


Large inlet S ducting adds drag.


Engines stop rotating FAR more often than that for reasons that aren't included in that stat like fuel problems, icing, ingestion, human mistake, etc, that the engine maker doesn't count.

But even if that is the number, a fleet of 1000 airplanes will have one of them failing every 375 hours.


Yes, it is. No certified examples exist.


None of that has anything to do with its true empty weight or its certified status. There's a huge gap between a test flying prototype and a certified plane with actual numbers.

Mike C.

Your are flying the brochure, not the actual plane.

The EA500 is an actual plane.

Startup aviation companies are notoriously optimistic and fail to account for lots of real world things when producing these enticing brochure numbers. They also fail or go bankrupt with nearly 100% certainty.


Gee, why does the Stratos need so much thrust? Maybe because it isn't an efficient design?

I find it shocking how much thrust the single engine jets require. The SF50 is more than twice the EA500 in thrust and goes slower.

When you compare a Bonanza to a Baron, the engines are about the same, so the Baron needs twice the engine total power. But that's "piston think" and it doesn't apply to jets where the single needs more total power. Being a single jet does not gain you efficiency, it is worse to be a single engine jet.

Mike C.

I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with the weight of the plane? Or maybe the wing design? Perhaps those play a bigger role than the overall drag from the engine than you seem to be harping on about. The Eclipse max takeoff weight is only 6,000 lbs. The Stratos max takeoff weight is almost 8,700 lbs. The SF50 has a takeoff weight of 6,000 lbs. That would be similar to me comparing the Stratos to the Honda Jet. I mean the cabins of both planes are fairly similar. The Honda Jet is only 2 ft longer inside. Yet the performance of the Stratos isn't that far off from the Honda Jet.

The thrust to weight ratio of each plane is:

Stratos 716: 3 to 1
Eclipse ea500: 3.3 to 1
SF50: 3.3 to 1

Just for fun:

Honda Jet: 2.6 to 1

So in reality all 3 planes have similar thrust to weight ratios and only the SF50 is the dog in this comparison.

So lets compare the SF50 to the Stratos since they are more apples to apples. With near equivalent thrust to weight ratios, why does the Stratos have an initial climb of almost 4,000 fl/min and the SF50 only about 1,700 ft/min? Perhaps drag? Perhaps the engine being out on the fuselage creates much more drag than the Stratos design. Also, perhaps the wing design isn't made for jet like performance.

Perhaps there's much more to the picture than the drag of the engines. The wing design plays a HUGE part. The stall speeds of each plane will tell part of the story.

Also, you love to rag on the idea that nobody has been able to certify up to FL410 in a single so far, but how many have actually tried? I don't think the SF50 was ever considered for that high. They absolutely could do FL340 but they stopped at FL310. So this tells me that was the intent for this plane all along.

How many have tried to certify a single for high altitude flight that can actually get there? My guess is almost nobody until now.

I don't plan on having a fleet of 1,000 airplanes.

When you buy insurance, you sort of do share that risk.

Cirrus SF50 insurance rates are roughly $60K/year. That's 4 times what I pay for my Citation V which is heavier, faster, and has double the seats.

When the Stratos is certified and has real numbers, then we can compare it to another certified and real airplane. Until then, the brochure is hopes and dreams presented by an inexperienced builder. The nicest term I can use for them is "aspirational".

Mike C.

When you buy insurance, you sort of do share that risk.

Cirrus SF50 insurance rates are roughly $60K/year. That's 4 times what I pay for my Citation V which is heavier, faster, and has double the seats.

When the Stratos is certified and has real numbers, then we can compare it to another certified and real airplane. Until then, the brochure is hopes and dreams presented by an inexperienced builder. The nicest terms I can use for them is "aspirational".

Mike C.

So I reached out to Stratos last week and they responded to me today. Sounds like they are no longer making experimental planes as of 2022 and are pushing towards certification. Oh well. I wish them luck.

$60k to insure a Cirrus Jet is that correct? Thats twice what I pay on the Mustang and I have a high liability limit.

Why is that? With a well-sealed composite pressure vessel and an outflow valve that closed completely, it wouldn't take much bottle at all to maintain pressure for a 10-15 minute emergency descent. Leaky cabins are easy, and tolerable in twins, but it doesn't have to be that way.

The ideal sealed cabin just doesn't happen in real life.

No outflow valve closes completely. No air source check valve closes completely. No control cable fairing seals completely. No door seal is perfect. And so forth. By the time you add it all up, and think about the cabin after several years of operation, it just isn't going to be a fully sealed compartment.

The Stratos is 160 cu ft cabin volume. To fill it once requires a big bottle which is a huge cylinder that weighs close to 80 lbs by my estimate. I suspect you probably need more than one full cabin volume to make this work, likely 3 or so, maybe? The size of the tank starts to be a physical problem all on its own, never mind the weight. It is like a big pneumatic bomb in an accident, too. It would be come a dispatch item and you would need equipment to pressurize it on the ground or have that built into the airplane (extra weight). It can't be pure oxygen, remember the Apollo 1 fire? So we're talking a new ground support equipment requirement here to compress ordinary air.

You are also going to get cooling effect from this with the pressure drop from 2000 PSI to ~8 PSI and that might condense and freeze the regulator. It will probably be noisy!

It is on the list of ways one could imagine doing this, but kind of weird. I think the electric compressor and battery is probably more feasible and sane, but still a challenge.

Mike C.