Ciholis,

What happened to the wager “If the SF50 is ever produced I will never post here again” or something to that effect. And yet you are still here stirring up the pot. Why are you still here?? Because your engineering mind is left wanting by what *should not be true.* Know what? That doesn’t matter.

What you can’t seem to understand is there are more than 600 deposit holders (mostly former SR2# owners) that are looking to go at least 100 KTAS faster in an airplane they are familiar with (all controls are in the same place for muscle memory) and they don’t care (or even know?) that there are other alternatives, jet or otherwise, but they trust the company and that’s what matters. Please remove the engineering hat for a moment and view history happening right before your eyes though the *common sense* lense, because it is happening whether it “makes sense” or not.

I respect many of your posts, Mike. But sometimes I think you strongly display envy for *The thing that should not be.*

Jon

What happen is that few actually remember it correctly, including yourself apparently.

Here is what it was, posted on Dec 16, 2014, in this thread:

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Cirrus says they will deliver 220 SF50s by 12/31/2017, 3+ years from now.

I say they don't deliver 110 SF50s by that date, half their promise.

No ifs, ands, buts, "well I didn't mean...", etc. Either customers have 110 SF50s or they don't by that date.

Money is not an appropriate wager. Let's wager something far more valuable. 1 year of forum participation. The loser doesn't post on BT for the entire year of 2018.

---

Nearly 3 years later, of course, it seems quite obvious Cirrus will not deliver 110 SF50s by end of this year.


Common sense says make things at a profit or it doesn't work.

It is a valid question to ask if Cirrus can do that at the contractual price of $1.39M for the first 300-400 units.

This issue, making a lot of planes below cost, is what killed Eclipse.

Mike C.

Not clear that is true without a big finish.

Currently, 17 SF50s on the US registry, of which 8 are registered to Cirrus, thus only 9 SF50s delivered to customers.

Lots of print about this airplane, most of it good since deliveries began. I'm happy for them and for the owners who can afford it. I'm sure there are lots of reasons why but my brain just cannot overide my eyes regarding the engine being mounted on top of the airframe. Should have been at least as beautiful as a Bonanza, wait that's impossible

Yuri's rule #2: I can claim anything is possible because rule #1 will never be proven wrong.

There is no practical way to get to your aviation utopia. The only way is to assume an insane actor with unlimited sums of money putting it into a losing cause.


Selling planes for $1.4M that cost $6M to make?

Thinking that is the opposite of "great".

Eventually the money runs out. For DiamondJet, it was before they delivered any airplanes, for Eclipse, it was after they delivered 262. But eventually, the money runs out when the plane is not being made profitably.

Mike C.

What happen is that few actually remember it correctly, including yourself apparently.

Here is what it was, posted on Dec 16, 2014, in this thread:

---

Cirrus says they will deliver 220 SF50s by 12/31/2017, 3+ years from now.

I say they don't deliver 110 SF50s by that date, half their promise.

No ifs, ands, buts, "well I didn't mean...", etc. Either customers have 110 SF50s or they don't by that date.

Money is not an appropriate wager. Let's wager something far more valuable. 1 year of forum participation. The loser doesn't post on BT for the entire year of 2018.

---

Nearly 3 years later, of course, it seems quite obvious Cirrus will not deliver 110 SF50s by end of this year.


Common sense says make things at a profit or it doesn't work.

It is a valid question to ask if Cirrus can do that at the contractual price of $1.39M for the first 300-400 units.

This issue, making a lot of planes below cost, is what killed Eclipse.

Mike C.

Because in the absence of actual numbers, we can make up our own....With a penetration price of $1.4m - what's the actual out the door price once options are added in? I can't find a list of option pricing. I can find the list of options, but no pricing associated with them.

New orders are at $1.94m making $1.4m somewhere between a one dollar and five hundred thousand dollar loss leader? I'm declaring it's less than $200k. So China needs to make up $200,000*372 positions = $74,000,000. chump change. And that's before factoring in the net on options Cirrus tacks onto the $1.4m. I don't think China is nervous.

Chip-

You can to a certain extent by observing the missing serial numbers in the US registry.

In the US registry, serial numbers 2 to 21 are present, except for serial 14. Your picture is serial 14. Thus it appears there is just one foreign registered SF50 so far delivered per the US registry.

Serials 4, 5, 10, and 17-21 are registered to Cirrus. Presumably, 17+ serials are planes waiting to be delivered.

Serial 1 is a test airplane that isn't registered. Serial 2 and 3 are test airplanes not conforming to the TC.

You can also look at the GAMA delivery numbers, but those are only posted through 2Q2017 so far, so that data is higher latency.

Mike C.

This is what I've been thinking. Cirrus has a good profit margin on the SR series, and a fat sugar daddy parent. Remember when Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer for free to take out the competition and effectively own the browser market? It worked for a long time, and many sites still write code for MSIE first. I remember when they gave Word and Excel to universities and students. When was the last time you heard from the former industry leaders Lotus 123 or Word Perfect?

Our visibility to the economics of the SF50 is very low. Maybe they're building at a loss, maybe they aren't. Maybe it's part of their business plan for the short term, maybe they're insane and suicidal. I'm thinking that the latter is pretty unlikely.

The adjective is "frumpy".

Looks cartoonish, toy like.

Eclipse suffers from this to some degree as well.

Mike C.

Maybe they misjudged the cost of developing and building the SF50.

I'm thinking that is highly likely, one might even say certain.

Now they are sitting on money losing contracts.

One wonders about the order methodology used here. I can understand it would work for a Textron or a Boeing, customers put in their orders and a deposit so they book their position in the delivery queue.

But for Cirrus, what is the advantage of locking in low prices for customers for several years of production? None that I can see. If losing $74M on the first airplanes is "chump change", then getting the $100K deposits is also chump change. Why not just build it and sell it for what the open market will take and not lose money on them at the beginning?

Mike C.

None of them met the standard for being objective and testable by a specific date. Here is an example from you about 3 years ago:

"I bet you TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS that IF the SF50 makes it to market it will be the best selling VLJ since the term VLJ came into existence."

There's no defined time in the future when that bet is shown to be false as it could always be true in the indefinite future.

Only an idiot would accept such a bet, and no one did.

Mike C.

None of them met the standard for being objective and testable by a specific date. Here is an example from you about 3 years ago:

"I bet you TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS that IF the SF50 makes it to market it will be the best selling VLJ since the term VLJ came into existence."

There's no defined time in the future when that bet is shown to be false as it could always be true in the indefinite future.

Only an idiot would accept such a bet, and no one did.

Mike C.

It's great to see the JC/MC show is back on the air!

It was getting a bit slow around here.

Money is not an appropriate wager.

Mike C.