They were never supposed to be delivered like that. The original company was totally mismanaged and they scammed a lot of people out of a lot of money. It is too bad, because the airplane is really great.

The new company is owned by a guy named Manson (think Charles), who's business practices I do not agree with. However, he brought financial stability to the company and they finished what the original company started. The 'total eclipse' (~80% older airframes have been upgraded) has GPS, coupled autopilot, moving map, radar, FIKI, etc.

Anyone can say whatever they want to about the airplane. The fact is that most owners love them.

There are some people who would rather own/fly a 40 year old citation. I think that is great. I have some acquaintances that own an old 501SP. They have been trying to get me to go in as a partner for a couple years. They fly it a lot. I have seen their spreadsheet. I have seen the spreadsheet on this eclipse. These have been real world actual costs, not hypothetical. The eclipse has been far less expensive to operate. The more hours flown, the bigger lead the eclipse gets. BTW- their partifular citation is probably less capable than the eclipse. Not RSVM (the eclipse is), and their GPS is a king 89b, all old avioincs (at least the eclipse has a garmin 400W and is glass)

Again, I say to each their own. I am going to get typed in the eclipse and hopefully fly it a bunch over the next year. I will happily post up my experience getting the rating and what it is like to fly this airplane in the real world if anyone here is interested.

I will fill in some of those answers for you

$16-18k initial type training plus mentor pilot for X number of hours thereafter if this is your first jet type

$5k annual recurrent training

insurance is ~$15k per year for a sub 1 mil hull

I do not have a breakdown on the maintenance checks in front of me, but I bet the 2 guys on this thread have it down to the penny.

This particular airplane's engines are on a maintenance program which is all inclusive at $91 per hour per engine. This covers everything. If you have a problem, they fly someone out and fix it. It takes care of the overhauls. Keep in mind this is engine time, not flight time (so you pay $182 per hour to taxi)

We need one of these folks to provide some realistic numbers with regard to hourly operating/MX expenses. It seems like the Eclipse might be fuel thrifty because of its small size but the rest is just as expensive and even more difficult to maintain than the other light jets.

Do they still require you to fly with their approved 'mentor' pilots who charge about twice what local CFIs with jet ratings so? I didn't like that. They wanted 100 hours for me and I couldn't shop for a CFI; they had their list. I fly with a Falcon Jet DPE and he couldn't get approve by Eclipse.

I'm past being able to use that plane because of payload, but looked at pretty seriously as a step up to my 58P. Some of the certifications could have really helped if done better. Payload probably could have been increased with some actual operating experience and going back to FAA.
I really liked flying it, but there were still too many unknowns for me. When Citation came out with their initial jets, several ADs, SBs ect. caused owners to incur additional costs. Eclipse is so new, there may be some of that to come. I didn't like the proprietary avionics. Some of these glass panels can be VERY expensive to repair/replace.

All that said, a mid 70s Citation certainly has issues compared to a new plane. Even with the Williams conversion, you are still flying a 40 year old bird.

Best,

Dave

What about a Mustang? Yes, it's double the price... but beyond that?

This airplane just had the whole MFD (big screen in the middle) replaced because of an intermittent issue. $11,000 was the cost. While not cheap by any stretch, I do not think that was totally out of line ...

Interestingly, in the almost 200 hours the plane has flown so far this year, that had been the only squawk and it wasn't even an issue that kept the plane stuck on the ground somewhere.

Useful load isn't a problem. From San Antonio to Wilmington, NC (direct thanks to a 30kt tailwind) we were 4 people, bags, and full fuel and were right at gross. I don't need to carry more than that ....

Enough room in the front seats to wear PFDs .

I know nothing about the operating costs or the factory support, but I flew a photo mission (Jessica Ambatts shooting,) with a Mustang and Phenom for an owner at OSH.

Formation flying is a good way to find out quickly how intuitive and precisely the airplane can be flown. I found it to be a very nice flying airplane

I don't know about now, but I couldn't get approval to skip the "Mentoring" with the "Old Eclipse" company. They had a fair amount of trouble with high-time jet pilots, and they wouldn't budge. One full day for me, from Albuquerque, to Las Vegas, to Camarillo (CA), to Santa Ana (CA), that last leg in full night conditions. Fairly high workload throughout, really good workout. Ended up with Greb Webster holding both throttles fully closed on a high, wide downwind, and saying "Simulated both engine failure, put us on the touchdown marks with the stall warning beeping." I did, and he went home, while my wife and I went back to Camarillo in the airplane.

I think I'd have been ok without the mentoring, but I'm glad I got it. They talked about 100 hours for newbies in jets, but the Mentors were good about "training to proficiency." A few got their hundred hours and then some, with the Mentor NOT signing them off, and parked the airplane, pending sale. I had beefs with the training program, but the Mentoring part of it was well done.

We had a LOT of trouble with our two Eclipses, one of them very serious, but I kinda liked the little bird. I'm glad it wasn't my money, though! I can see where owners who don't have the problems are in love with it, and the "New Eclipse" solves most of the problems.

100 hours is insane. The current FAA approved training programs do require mentoring, but nothing like that. I was told it will be done not really on an hourly basis, but on a 'task accomplished' basis. I was told I could probably knock it out in another 4-5 days or so. Instead I am going to fly with my mentor pilot on trips we would normally be doing anyway.

In response to the training costs, as mentioned already by Jim Christie, training requirements indeed are part of the type certificate of the Eclipse.

One area of training that I neglected to mention is the requirement for emergency situation and upset training. The cost of this averages around 3500.00 and is an addition to any of the the other training requirements.

I believe Simcom charges 24,000 USD for type training which includes the checkride which is all simulator based training. If the checkride is performed in a simulator and this is your first type rating, then you are issued a conditional type rating which requires a minimum of 10 hours of S.O.E ( supervised operational experience )

If your training is in the aircraft, unless you take your checkride with the FAA ( not recommended) the DPE will cost you around 2000.00 for the type ride plus expenses

In either case, mentoring is required and for the non jet rated pilot who has had little to no experience flying in the flight levels, he is going to need an average of 20 hours of mentor time.

Mentor pilots are charging in the vicinity of 800.00 per day plus travel, lodging, and food expenses.

So real world numbers whether you go Simcom or in the plane with an approved instructor, after completing all the requirements, your bill is going to be around 40,000 to 45,000 USD after you figure in all the expenses by the time you are released to fly unrestricted PIC

Recurrent training from Simcom is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,400 plus travel and lodging expenses.

Non sim recurrent training averages around 2,900 USD plus expenses, flying in either an owned or rented Eclipse. Rental rates will run you around 900.00 per hour block wet if you rent, and you can plan on two days of flying adding up to around 4 hours flight time.

So either way you look at it, real costs for recurrent will run you between 7 and 9 thousand per year.

The last insurance carrier we had was the best priced at 15,000 USD per year but would only accept Simcom for recurrent. There was an alternate carrier that would allow non sim based recurrent, but they wanted 20,000 USD per year.

Actually calculationg the real cost of owneship is the biggest variable in the equation, and quite complicated to predict. I will be more then happy to go into that if anyone is interested.

Cheers,
Dave

I will be taking my checkride with th FAA. Why do you say this is not recommended?

When Eclipse first started delivering the planes, and prior to sim training, there where no DPE's other then 3 or 4 FAA examiners.

So until the sim training got ramped up, most everyone including instructors were having to take the ck ride with the Feds. I believe the failure rate was better then 75 percent.

I was in one of the first sim training classes with Higher Power and a good many of the instructors that had examiner authority had failed the checkride, my instructor included.

The feds don't fly this plane much, and I think you are going to get a much tougher ride through them.

This seems to indicate that the maintenance costs are not off the charts.

100 hours of Mentoring does sound insane, at first. But you've got to realize that Eclipse was potentially dealing with low-time private pilots! The only requirement to qualify for the training was the money to get there. And as I said, a few pilots did not make it, and would not make it even given 1,000 hours of mentoring! It was actually a pretty good, simple system, I think.

There ARE a lot of very low-time pilots, and to my knowledge, there has never been a accident. That speaks volumes, in my opinion.