No multi, no turbine and no FL experience are all small hurdles. The one that is of serious concern IMO is no IFR (IMC).

Don,

Thank you for the generous offer and the kind words. I'll reach out if I make it that way.

Thanks!

Thanks for adding me as well!

I own a -1 MU-2 and love it. It's my "Cirrus" for the mostly local flying I do and 400 mile trips I often make. I make probably 8 cross country trips (1,500nm) a year and it's perfect for that too. Extremely reliable and fast enough. It's efficient enough for flying 30 minute trips down low. It's not hard to fly but it's the only plane I've flown (other than the lancair) that I am never relaxed on take off and landing. It's a man's airplane and needs a pilot. It's not hard to fly but when the power comes off those giant props, there's a lot of drag. It needs to get on step after take off before it starts climbing well too. You need to fly it every week to stay current.

The Citation is so easy to fly and forgiving I think someone could get their private pilots license in it. I could go ten years without flying and hop in one and feel comfortable quickly.
The range is not as good as the Mitsubishi. It burns a ton of fuel that it's decadent to fly it solo or on short flights if you have any care about money and we all do.

Neither airplane breaks very often. The maintenance is cheap for both. The insurance is more expensive on the Mitsubishi. The training costs are about the same for both.

With all this said, don't skip steps. Get a Baron or Meridian and then work your way into one of these machines after getting your instrument rating and flying your Cirrus a few 100 more hours. If you're going to ignore this step then the Citation has a higher likelihood of success and much lower chance of death than an MU-2. You really need a few hundred hours in the instrument system before flying either airplane though. When you fly a turbine, you are expected to fly professionally. This is almost impossible to do without some experience flying a 172 on instruments for a while. On the flip side, you could fly an MU-2 VFR at 17,500 with no instrument rating but I think this would eventually result in a very bad day.

No multi, no turbine (I wouldn’t know...yet) and no FL experience are rather large hurdles.

To me NO IFR after 500hrs and 3 years is the ELEPHANT this thread.
1/2 way done...you should have been done with IFR within first year of Cirrus.

I went to Aerostar after 11 years and 1500 hours in Columbia WITH IFR and Flying often in mid teens. Fairly large step to me although a good bit of transition challenge for me was glass on Colimbia back to steam on Aerostar.

I currently also have a Cirrus which requires MUCH LESS mental bandwidth than Aerostar.
MUCH LESS

Get your IFR ASAP, Fly another year and also up high on O2 while dreaming and looking for your next bird.

Jonathan,
I don’t mean to be harsh,

I would rather risk sounding a bit harsh and hopefully giving you a bit of pause vs reading About you in a future crash talk.

Jonathan-

The MU2 is a wonderful airplane. I owned a '79 -10 Marquise for 3 1/2 years and have several hundred hours in it. Others have given you excellent advice with regard to intermediate steps enroute to your goal of owning a MU2. To make the direct jump to an MU2, you're going to need to fly with a mentor pilot for at least 100 hours, maybe more. I had no turbine time, a few hundred hours of multi time plus a couple thousand hours overall when I bought the MU2. The insurance company required 50 hours of mentor pilot time and that was 10 years ago.

One other MU2 owner that used to post here a lot (Mike Ciholas) went straight from a 210 to a MU2 short body. It can be done. IIRC, Mike had several hundred (few thousand?) hours and his instrument rating when he bought his MU2.

The lack of instrument experience is probably my biggest concern. Instrument flying is hard enough, but throw in the complexities of a high performance, twin engine turbine aircraft and the proficiency demanded is fairly high. I've been flying for 40 years and I still see unique instrument conditions from time to time. I learn something important as a pilot on a regular basis still today.

Going straight to an MU2 IS doable, but I think you would be better off with an intermediate step. Get your instrument ASAP and go and get some real world instrument experience.

My good friend is an ATP, MEII, CAP pilot, and has owned his 182 for 4 years. His insurance dropped his limit from 2MM smooth to 1/100,000. If underwriters are doing that to experienced pilots flying easy, garden variety singles there’s just no way they are going to underwrite someone in a MU2 with no IFR, no ME, and no turbine.

Agreed. When I got my IFR no way was I ready to fly anything more demanding than a piston single. You really need the IFR skills that comes from flying in the system for a few hundred hours before stepping in to something higher performance. Just my opinion.

With zero multi, turbine, or high altitude experience, you might be lucky to get insurance in a Twin Cessna lately, much less a MU-2 as I understand the underwriters are getting tight on pressurized aircraft. I would have a long heart-to-heart with your insurance agent. If your going to fly it un-insured, you might have a long heart-to-heart with God before meeting him...

Think you need 100 hours of multi.

From the MU2 SFAR:

4. Aeronautical Experience. No person may act as pilot-in-command of a Mitsubishi MU– 2B series airplane for the purpose of flight unless that person holds an airplane category and multi-engine land class rating, and has logged a minimum of 100 flight hours of pilot-in-command time in multi-engine airplanes.

Very good point. In order to fly single pilot PIC, you'll need a minimum of 100 hours of ME time. But you can include all ME time that you accumulate, such as the time you'll log getting your ME rating, and you don't have to wait to get to 100 hours to begin SFAR training.

Flying in the instrument environment should be second nature before getting into an MU2. My personal belief is that the MU2 is a poor place to learn flying IFR.

My brother-in-law got his IFR rating in a T-38 with a single VOR/ILS radio. He said it was the hardest thing he ever did in aviation.

Vince

As someone who is actively shopping for a twin turbine (MU2 in the running), I will echo the sentiments expressed above. From my vantage point zero multi time is not an issue (you'll need that many hours to satisfy the Subpart N requirement for MU2 anyway) but solid instrument skills need to be second nature. And while training and practice is important to keep instrument skills sharp, IMO there is no substitute for real actual IMC experience. So my advice would be to get that instrument ticket ASAP and spend some time getting those instrument skills down. And enjoy the ride- my instrument rating was the most fun to acquire and the most fun to utilize.

The aviators that get their Instrument ratings in T-38's are generally are generally people who have been handpicked from the small results of a very strict weeding-out process and then make it through a very difficult program that has a very high washout rate (after being given a zillion dollars worth of training).

I suspect even above-average aviators would have a challenge meeting that bar.

$.02