Oh give it a break Norm.

Your thinly veiled and weak insults are silly at best.

At least Mike has the intellectual ability to take me on directly.

Operating a Citation on the cheap isn't a secret. We were doing it at RidgeAire long before MC or MT did it.

I don't think Mike is a poser, part of reason he has a Citation V is that he called me for advice and I suggested the V instead of the S/II he was considering.

But go ahead, keep putting words in my mouth and taking cheap shots.

I have experience flying the CJ3+, Phenom 300, and Piaggio.

Between the CJ3+ and the Phenom 300, I think the Phenom 300 is the obvious choice. I found the 3+ slightly more fun to hand fly, but the Phenom dominates it in every other category (performance, cabin dimension, payload, W&B range, flight range, externally serviced lav, etc). I think the P300 is a lot more plane for a little more money.

That said, my wife and I found the cabins in both those jets to be uncomfortable, which is why I now fly a Piaggio, which is also a ton more fun to hand fly than either. The Piaggio feels like the old Virgin business class. The light jets feel like basic economy. The Piaggio is also quieter on the inside, way more stable in turbulence, better on contaminated runways, and flies with a lower cabin altitude. Suffering a slightly longer flight in vastly higher comfort feels like a good trade off to us. Sort of like international business class vs concorde, but if the Concorde was only 15% faster, not 2.5x faster. If either of the jets planes could go transcon without a fuel stop, it might be a different analysis, although 5+ hours in a Phenom would make me feel like a Submariner.

To Anthony's point, once Piaggio (now under new ownership) modernizes its cockpit, combined with the already existing 1700nm extended range configuration, I think it will be a force of nature. Piaggio also have to overcome the conventional wisdom that maintenance is a problem with the Piaggio. My Piaggio dispatch is better than my Phenom 300 did (so many minor failures in the Phenom make you AOG or limited to stupidly low altitude), and my Phenom was a decade newer. And all but one of the two dozen Piaggio owners I know have had the same experience.

And to have Mike C's back for a minute: you do not "get back" your money in the end on a much more expensive jet. If you consider a $5 plane and a $10 million plane, that $5 million difference -- or the after-tax portion of that if you are depreciating it -- is invested in the market earning ~10% annually when you buy the $5m bird. So even if you manage to sell your plane for its purchase price, the capital opportunity cost is still real. Having $5 million out of the market for 15 years costs you $21 million upon exit-- plus depreciation.

Ed

It has been awhile

A couple of you guys need to go back and read this again.

Nicely said Bill.

To highlight something in Ed’s post above, as he said - from a pilots perspective the Phenom is not fun to hand fly. In my experience, it has very poorly balanced flight controls; it is very pitch sensitive and very roll heavy, making it work. It is exacerbated in SEO, not as bad as the sim makes it appear, but when I had to shut down an engine at 36,000 it certainly increased the workload until the checklist allowed the use of the autopilot.

This is only an issue for the owner flown airplanes, those that buy it and have a crew flying it couldn’t care less ow it feels.

Brad

I have heard from multiple operators that the p300 is a ‘handful’ and is not ideal for single pilot ops.

Anyone care to expand on that? The avionics at least seem quite simple.

These must be "alternative facts" that my plane is poorly maintained and under engineered and a death trap.

There isn't much that is unknown or hidden about a legacy Citation, it has been thoroughly tested and it was well engineered.

When the modern jets are busy clearing their FADEC faults, or can't land on some runway due to lacking TRs, or have some weird software glitch, I'll happily go flying in my older, simpler, jet.

As to me having special knowledge, you don't get away from that with a new airplane. The last person I helped on CJP was an M2 owner who had a hydraulic pump go bad and was AOG waiting for the factory to receive new ones in weeks or months. I found him one at a salvage yard. Saved him buckets of money, too.

Just because you have a new airplane doesn't mean you don't have problems. Ask 525 owners about intercoolers, CJ4 owners about windshield frame corrosion, or outflow valves, or a host of other things. New often means "latent bugs" as the CJ4 windshield fiasco shows. 525 owners are still complaining about known software bugs, like the false G3000 avionics overtemp bug.

The word "AOG" appears 900 times in the 510 and 525 topics on CJP. It appears 121 times in the legacy 500 topic. Something to think about.

Mike C.

So much for the "others can't do what Mike does" argument you made earlier. It isn't a secret at all and others are doing it, just like you said above.

I'm not doing anything particularly special. I have a good shop that has agreeable owner policies. I source my own parts. I fix things early. I pay attention to what the airplane tells me. That's basically the entire strategy. It isn't hard.

Mike C.

So much for the "others can't do what Mike does" argument you made earlier. It isn't a secret at all and others are doing it, just like you said above.

I'm not doing anything particularly special. I have a good shop that has agreeable owner policies. I source my own parts. I fix things early. I pay attention to what the airplane tells me. That's basically the entire strategy. It isn't hard.

Mike C.

Any specifics given? It is a high performance swept wing jet so, by default, the market prefers 2 pilot ops but I don’t know of a better platform for single pilot operations. It’s virtually identical in terms of operations as a 100, just faster, farther and higher. I believe it’s the same type rating in some parts of the world.

Cool story.

JetACQ client #1 flies one.

Josh reads Beechtalk, but rarely post.

He was referred to me by Tom Clements back in 2014, over a year before I started Jet Acquisitions. His hard-working family came from humble beginnings, built up a company and sold it. Josh‘s desire was to be an airline pilot, and they had already helped him purchase a piston aircraft to begin that journey.

Josh and I worked together to build a gorgeous little C90B, installed a Garmin panel and Blackhawk engines.

A year or so later, he was ready for an upgrade. I was ready to start Jet Acquisitions, so I made a deal with Josh to be our launch client.

We helped him purchase a really nice King Air 300, he flew that for the family and ended up putting it on a charter certificate. By this point, I had introduced Josh to the world of part 91 aviation and he had lost interest for the most part in the airlines.

Ironically, a wonderful guy named Edd Hendee purchased that C90B, and later became one of my clients, he followed Josh‘s footsteps into a King Air 300, to this day Josh and Edd are two of my dearest friends!

We then purchased Josh‘s King Air 300 for a Washington based client, and I helped Josh get a job flying a King Air 350 for a client we represented in Phoenix.

That client was also referred to us by Tom Clements! You can’t make stuff like this up!

And then we replaced the King Air 350 with a Phenom 300 and Josh flies it today.

The airplane can’t be too hard to fly, because Josh flies it!

All kidding aside with tons of turboprop time, but no jet time, Josh went to school and transitioned straight into the Phenom 300 with zero mentor time required.

I’m very proud of the young man and all that he has accomplished!

I think Chip provides a service that people want, and I hope to use a service like Chip's or others soon.

I think Mike C is really really smart, and good at managing and owning his legacy Citation. I couldn't do what Mike C does. I'm not that smart or have the time or energy.

I’ll need help in finding my next airplane, AND, I want newer, not legacy. That will be my choice. Newer and late "model" is my preference and satisfies whatever need I have that makes me think that it being newer will have newer technology not found in legacy airframes. Rightly or wrongly, that's my desire.


My new German Sports SUV has a long warranty and newer technology, that the 10-year-old model doesn't have. Sure, they both can drive the same distance on the same tank of gas, and yes you can do Bluetooth phone, and maybe the is ride about the same. (Not really, the newer one is better, but incrementally, not so different for this comparison). But I know for a fact it takes time and $'s to maintain that older molder to a standard that mine has naturally, due to the fact it just left the factory in October. The 10-year-old versions shortcomings and refinements included in mine from the start.

Different strokes for different folks and wallets.

Any specifics given? It is a high performance swept wing jet so, by default, the market prefers 2 pilot ops but I don’t know of a better platform for single pilot operations. It’s virtually identical in terms of operations as a 100, just faster, farther and higher. I believe it’s the same type rating in some parts of the world.

While not a huge jump, it is quite a bit faster that the 100 - I’ll tell a story later about how much so.

A bit swept wing so there is that; pretty good thrust to weight ratio (same T/R as a Citation X), and a lot of thrust for the design.

I’d say the handful come from V1 Loss of engine, that thrust does create quite a bit of yaw and if you aren’t on top of it the horizon swings pretty quickly. After that, the Embraer checklists are lengthy, refer to other checklists then comeback to the first one, then refer to the chart on page 10-23, etc.

Some memory items have 8-9 tasks, and in certain situations, lead to a memory items that have 6-7 tasks. Again, not a big deal, but in the heat of the moment it can be a lot.

It isn’t so much the airplane, it is handling the airplane, while dealing with an emergency, at high thrust, that can be cumbersome for some less initiated.

In my initial (2016) there was at least one new owner that was sent home and asked if he really wanted to come back. He had a crew and was wanting to fly it some.

As far as speed compared to the 100, I left JWN in Nashville one day in a 300 about 9-10 minutes behind a 100 going to IAD, I “passed” it about Charleston WV.

Brad

These must be "alternative facts" that my plane is poorly maintained and under engineered and a death trap.

There isn't much that is unknown or hidden about a legacy Citation, it has been thoroughly tested and it was well engineered.

When the modern jets are busy clearing their FADEC faults, or can't land on some runway due to lacking TRs, or have some weird software glitch, I'll happily go flying in my older, simpler, jet.

As to me having special knowledge, you don't get away from that with a new airplane. The last person I helped on CJP was an M2 owner who had a hydraulic pump go bad and was AOG waiting for the factory to receive new ones in weeks or months. I found him one at a salvage yard. Saved him buckets of money, too.

Just because you have a new airplane doesn't mean you don't have problems. Ask 525 owners about intercoolers, CJ4 owners about windshield frame corrosion, or outflow valves, or a host of other things. New often means "latent bugs" as the CJ4 windshield fiasco shows. 525 owners are still complaining about known software bugs, like the false G3000 avionics overtemp bug.

The word "AOG" appears 900 times in the 510 and 525 topics on CJP. It appears 121 times in the legacy 500 topic. Something to think about.

Mike C.