To be fair, you are leaving out unscheduled maintenance.

You can have some rather large unexpected maintenance bills on the Citation that don’t exist on the M600

Making some assumptions: temperature 10 C, 500 lbs cabin load, fuel for 1000 nm, BGJN runway is 2772 ft long.

Takeoff: 2410 ft (dry), 2975 (wet)

Landing: 2130 ft (dry), 2190 ft (wet)

I'm slightly out on wet takeoff by 205 ft, but this is with an engine failure at the worst possible time and coming to a stop on the runway. The exposure time between the speed at which I can fully stop in 2772 ft and I can fly away is literally about 1 second.

My takeoff distance if I go will be the same as dry since no runway friction is involved in a go. If I make V1 about 4 knots lower (about 1 second early), then I can stop on the runway if an engine fails before that, and I can fly away if it fails after that, but I won't quite be 35 ft AGL at the end of the runway (about 28 ft).

What is your engine out takeoff distance? :-)

My landing distances are dandy, no problem there. Practically no adder for wet due to TR.

Does your book give you wet numbers for runway usage? The published takeoff distance for the M600 at max weight, sea level, and ISA is 2635 ft, so you barely fit at that operating point. What is your accel stop distance if your engine fails right before rotate? I bet it is longer than the runway.

One has to consider the radically higher standard my numbers represent. I can easily operate on that runway at no higher risk than you can.

I'll also point out that BGJN was likely only a fuel stop, and my range would likely eliminate the need to stop entirely. CYYR (Goose Bay, Canada) to BIKF (Keflavik, Iceland) is 1320 nm and easy to do even in severe headwinds and with blue spruce routing. Given the fuel price at BGJN (about double that of CYYR or BIKF), skipping it would be good!

If BGJN was my actual intended destination, I don't need to be that heavy to leave given CYFB (Iqaluit, Canada) is only 532 nm away. So this is kind of a contrived example I would never face.

Mike C.

Add a 0 to unplanned maintenance bills on a twin jet vs an SETP. Plus Mike has the skill and interest to manage his jet, I don’t have the skills, interest or time to source parts and work the system. Pretty much just a drop off at the SC kind of guy. The M600 has 5 years of maintenance included including annuals, the engine 7 year warranty, but we are about to come off the Piper ultimate, so will see what it is like off of the plan. Everything about a jet is bigger. Training, maintenance, fuel burn, ramp fees, training, hangar fees etc. if you have a jet mission and the funds, makes sense. I don’t right now. But maybe one day.

Can you guys post your t/o and landing tables? I’m curious.

Outside of engines, can you give examples? What is on my plane that will require "large" unscheduled maintenance bills that the M600 doesn't have? I do have an air cycle machine, but I just overhauled it for about $13K, so that's relatively minor. Avionics are similar, Garmin. Deice is boots. So where is my major risk here?

As for engines, I do have two JT15D engines and if I fly through an ash cloud, that will be expensive. So don't do that! I do have FOD insurance, however. I don't have a prop, though. My exposure on engines is higher, no doubt, but the JT15D is pretty robust.

Mike C.

The AFM charts are literally 100+ pages covering configuration, altitude, temperature, weight, etc.

I made a summary file, but too big to attach to a forum post, so here is a link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jko2Fm ... sp=sharing

Note that sometimes flap 7 takeoff is less distance than flap 15. Here's a graph:

The graph shows a few weird things.

One, flaps 7 becomes shorter at lighter weights.

Two, lighter weights don't shorten the distance below about 13,000 lbs. That feels like the numbers have been manipulated to stay above some minimum. If I takeoff at 11,000 lbs, I will be doing way better than this chart.

Mike C.

Outside of engines, where is this money going?

Does the M600 have a robust used parts market? A robust STC/PMA after market?

As for engines, my plan is to hot section them and fly past TBO. This is a common tactic these days. It nets you a lot of hours for not much money.


You paid for all that in purchase cost and initial depreciation.

I bet my maintenance costs will be less per mile with my situation than an M600 being taken to a factory service center.


I can't afford to buy an M600. Maybe someday.

For my usage, 100 to 150 hours per year, the Citation V costs me less than an M600 when you consider the total net money involved. If you dismiss the capital costs, then yes, the M600 is cheaper, but that's lying to yourself.

Mike C.

Outside of engines, can you give examples? What is on my plane that will require "large" unscheduled maintenance bills that the M600 doesn't have? I do have an air cycle machine, but I just overhauled it for about $13K, so that's relatively minor. Avionics are similar, Garmin. Deice is boots. So where is my major risk here?

As for engines, I do have two JT15D engines and if I fly through an ash cloud, that will be expensive. So don't do that! I do have FOD insurance, however. I don't have a prop, though. My exposure on engines is higher, no doubt, but the JT15D is pretty robust.

Mike C.

Your definition of "not much money" may not match others. To really say one can own a V for less than a single turbine, we need more data. We need:

How many hours you have to your next HSI.
The low end cost of a pair of HSIs.
The potential high end cost of a pair of HSIs.

And we need to do the same for the M600.

I think that's where this idea of the "jet is cheaper" will start to show some wear around the edges.

You had training twice. :-)

My training for CE-500 61.58 SPE for last year and this year is $6400 per year at Flightsafety, all in sim. I bought a 2 for 1 special. Lots of choices here for sims and in plane training. My MU2 sim training was close to this number, was fixed based, and there was no other sim choices. I trained every 6 months in my MU2, but I only train once a year in my V and I feel just as current, so I am actually paying less for training now.

Ramp fees: I generally don't pay them much since minimum fuel waives them. Haven't paid one in a while.

Fuel: Contract fuel (particularly CAA) helps a lot, and I make volume discounts with the amount I buy much of the time. I do burn more fuel than an M600, absolutely no question, about 2.5 times as much per mile I'd estimate.

Hangar: Community hangar, $720/month. This can be expensive depending on where you are based and generally jets do get charged more for both rate and area. Some folks in high rent areas are paying $2K/month for their jet hangar. Availability can be a problem in some areas.

Parking: You left this one out. I do pay more for transient parking than an M600 would cost. Sometimes it is laughably cheap (like $10 at KSGS or $20 at KIAG). Sometimes it is quite high (like $150 a night). I do look at parking prices when choosing airports.

Landing fees: For my V, it is above 12,500 lbs, so I occasionally get hit with a landing fee a lighter airplane would not. Typically these are less than $50 and don't happen often, maybe less than 5 times a year for me. Relatively minor.

Maintenance: I am an involved frugal owner with low cost maintenance on my home field (which saves a bunch over remote maintenance, BTW). I'm not really doing anything super special, just "shopping" mostly for parts and services. If you are a service center guy, then newer planes are better for that. I don't really know what my long term maintenance budget will be like since I am only now exiting the startup costs to get the plane into shape. I've flown it about 205 hours, spent maybe $45 during that time, which included phase 1-4 and ACM rebuild, so about $220/hour so far. I expect it to level out at about $200/hour since my LUMP reduces my inspections to a very low level. For example, this year and next, no major inspections, could be very light on maintenance costs. Then in 2025, phase 1-5, the "big one". We shall see how it goes.

Mike C.

That's exaggerating. Overhaul is about $500K/side, HSI varies, $40-75K a side so I've been told. Tarver says he can do HSI for $25K/side so he has magic beans or something.


There are a few out there. I get emails from folks trying to sell them.

The JT15D-5A shares many parts with a -4, so you can pick up used parts (like HT blades) if you need to.


If you know the right shop, it was easy. Full overhaul of the turbine and heat exchanger.

Collecting information is the most powerful way I save money.


M600 has much the same, say prop versus TRs. It's not like the M600 doesn't have parts that can break.

And I bet there are far more limited choices as to where to get those parts.


That's true for an M600, too, particularly if your are a service center guy.

We shall see. If I do get a $100K bill, then we did something major and the pane was improved by that.

Absolute worst case, I could part the plane out and probably get close to what I paid for it. I feel my capital risk is very low, much lower than an M600.

Mike C.

Mike, if you get out of a phase 1-5 for less than $100k… your shop didn’t do a 1-5.

Again, you skim over things like windshields, I haven’t priced one in years, but they’re probably $50k - $60k each.

$500k for a clean overhaul, I was talking about exposure. You can certainly have an engine event that cost you $800k

If you know of engines, I have someone looking, a friend of a friend. They’re AOG with a number 4 bearing out, need an engine to hang to move the airplane.

I did just realize that I didn’t call Tarver, when my go to JT15 guys says he hasn’t seen a 5A in a few years, I just took his word for it.

That logic is never true for any plane. It's a common owner's fallacy to sooth the hurt of the big hit to the wallet.

Before the $100k check: You had a functioning 30 year old plane with no known issues.

After the $100k check: You have a functioning 30 year old plane with no known issues.

The hull value won't change by $100k.

372 hours. About 2.5 years or so at typical usage.


Tarver says $25K. I'm budgeting $75K. Nets another 1800 hours. That's $83/hour for a pair, about $0.23 per nm.


Not clear what that is and what the odds are. My borescopes were good at purchase so we shall see. I'd expect the upper end to be a full overhaul. Not all that cost is lost, however, some of it comes back as market value.


It has similar HSI/OH intervals. It will be cheaper, not sure how much. Let's say $25K HSI for 1800 hours, $14/hour, about $0.06 per nm.


When you pile up the capital costs, it pays for a lot. For the next 2172 hours, I need one HSI. That's 15+ years of flying, $15K per year. The cost of sunk capital in an M600 exceeds that greatly.

Mike C.

Acquisition cost and maintenance cost are two TOTALLY different things!

Good money vs bad.

Acquisition cost = good money, you should get some, maybe most of it back.

Maintenance and fuel = bad money, you’ll never see it again.