It's not a "contract".

Just join CAA or a get a UVair card. Nobody pays list price on AirNav.

I think the PC12 looks bad ass. It looks like a personal airliner. Not sure how anyone wouldn't be impressed walking up to one. What are there like 8 steps?? Unless you roll in a GV the PC12 is a serious machine...

Boom.

Yes I know PC12 is sexy. I just wish folks who know nothing of aviation did also.

This is exactly the sort of false comfort that leads to high accident rates.

Complexity of aircraft systems hardly ever factors into GA accidents. Lack of pilot judgment, particularly continuing into riskier situations, is a major factor, and you can't automate that away in the design of the machine. Telling Cirrus pilots they can be lesser trained is a recipe for disaster, and the early SR series accident rate showed that. What fix it? More training.

You can be darn sure the FSB (Flight Standards Board, the people who set the standards for type ratings) is not going to give SF50 pilots a pass on the type rating. I think we are going to find a bunch of soft SR22 pilots who can't cut the mustard when it comes to a jet type rating, even on a slow limited jet. It would not surprise me if half the pilots showing up for the SF50 course have deficient hand flown instrument skills.

Mike C.

I like the way you account for cost in flying your plane Jason! I have a similar attitude about operating it. After all, if you're going to agonize over the cost of every flight you should do something else. But I do look at capital cost and depreciation as I airplane shopping as another value variable to consider. Perhaps that's because I'm moving into a different cost realm I want to understand. Perhaps I'll find the plane that I say I don't care about those two things because that's what I want to fly. That's what happened with the Cirrus.

Most contract fuel programs are free. You sign up, get card, show up at airport, fuel, hand them the program card, get the contract price. Don't ask me why this works, but it does.

Those were the prices starting at 1 gallon. Buy more and the price goes even cheaper sometimes.

CAA is an exception, $600/year fee. It can be hit or miss if that works for some people. It works for me at about $3 saved for every $1 spent.

I am paying way less $/mile than, say, a 421 for fuel.

Another example:

KBFI:

100LL: $6.82
Jet list: $4.08
Jet contract: $2.42

I did a west coast swing (KBFI, KLGB, KAPA) and never paid over $3.

Mike C.

If an executive makes $10M a year in total comp. divided by 2040 hours a year or ~$5000 an hour then putting 3-4 people like that on a G-V makes sense to go 100 miles. It also makes sense when you renew your key person life insurance to have a certain level of aviation capability/safety.

It's all relative.

0 ... Zero ... Nada ... Nothing

Uvair, AVFUEL, Shell, Epic, Arrow, Everest, CJPFA, CAA, etc. There are about a dozen Jet-A fuel programs competing for your business. Sign up is free for most with no minimums.

Well said. Frankly time is the most valuable resource. It is also not possible to work on the airlines especially in the cheap seats that I buy, but with GA you can.

I can show my PC12 costing me $600 an hour to operate @ 250-300 hours a year.

But I just tell myself $1000 per hour to keep "justification" straight in my head.

I'm also the guy who does NOT include "cost of money". PC12 has gone up in value since I bought mine.

These are all more reasons not to look at it on an hourly basis which I admittedly do also.

I don't count the cost of capital in my airplane ownership. If you don't spend the money, you don't have an airplane.

I had Bonanza annuals that cost over $30K. All Bonanza's are not the same. I've never had a PC12 annual cost even half that number. Yes, I know there are cheaper ways to run a bonanza and that's fine.

I buy JetA for $2.50 a gallon a lot of the time.

Since this post I have added all my receipts for my PC12 and it came out to $1K an hour to operate. That's just dividing all expenses by the number of hours on the airframe. Some years airplane ownership is cheap. Some years it's not. Just depends.

I had a dream last night that I was at Kitty Hawk during the Wright brother’s first powered flight and I ran into Mike C.’s grandpa. His analysis:

1) This aircraft is severely range limited
2)Baggage space is non-existent
3)My horse drawn carriage has a comfortable wood seat, why would I want to travel lying down?

Most will get through eventually with additional training. That was the experience in the early days with the Eclipse and Mustang.

now that is funny as hell



even Ciholas is laughing

This is exactly the sort of false comfort that leads to high accident rates.

Complexity of aircraft systems hardly ever factors into GA accidents. Lack of pilot judgment, particularly continuing into riskier situations, is a major factor, and you can't automate that away in the design of the machine. Telling Cirrus pilots they can be lesser trained is a recipe for disaster, and the early SR series accident rate showed that. What fix it? More training.

You can be darn sure the FSB (Flight Standards Board, the people who set the standards for type ratings) is not going to give SF50 pilots a pass on the type rating. I think we are going to find a bunch of soft SR22 pilots who can't cut the mustard when it comes to a jet type rating, even on a slow limited jet. It would not surprise me if half the pilots showing up for the SF50 course have deficient hand flown instrument skills.

Mike C.