Because that is the way jets work best.


They should buy a turboprop.

The SF50 is the worst of both worlds, lame turboprop performance (altitude, weather, speed, climb rate) coupled with jet negatives (type rating, recurrent training, fuel flow, engine costs, runway condition sensitivity).

This all done for a false sense of making it "easy" for piston pilots to fly. Flying a twin jet is exactly the same as a single until an engine quits, and then the twin is WAY easier after that happens.

Mike C.

Your piston think is showing again.

After a twin jet engine fails, you only need one option: fly.

After a single jet engine fails, now you have to consider a huge number of options and circumstances.

Put an Eclipse and an SF50 next to each other on the ramp and give the pilot a choice saying "you will have an engine failure on your next flight, which plane do you choose?".

Only an idiot would choose the SF50. Handling the engine failure in the Eclipse is FAR easier and FAR safer with FAR fewer circumstances to consider. Just fly like you have been trained to do to a safe landing an airport you can CHOOSE.

If there is no engine failure, then there's no difference between the two, so the twin causes no more work normally, and eases the work upon engine failure dramatically over a single.

Mike C.

Oh here we go.... The SF50 somehow get's you for point A to B differently than a Mustang does? Requires a "pro" to handle that Garmin right? LOL.

I hate to break to all of you but I'll bet $100 that MOST SF50's end up being privately owned but pro-flown.

In fact, the only EA500's I see flying are at my buddy's charter company he owns at PDK.

Mike C,

You are missing the point. I was giving a specific example, in a singe engine plane. When the engine stops, all considerations of speed, climb, go around... all disappear. You pitch for best glide, and look for a place to crash.
Much simpler logic.
Now take the altitude restrictions of the SF50. You have thunderstorms which start at 7K and are building to the low 20s.
Eclipse, Mustang... you have to think, can I climb over it? Do I have enough O2 for single pilot ops over 40k? With the SF50, this becomes a simple no go.

With additional capability, you get additional options, with add additional complexity. Sometimes, removing options is the best thing. e.g. No RPM level in a piston Cirrus. Cirrus is all about simplicity.

Tim

Looking for a place to crash is not simpler than basically doing nothing in a twin jet. All you do is trim, fly a speed, and you get 700 FPM or better. Duh.

Flying a jet away on one engine is trained for and repeatable.

Finding a place to crash a single is not and comes with huge sensitivity to the exact conditions when it occurs.


I think that's naive to suggest that is a "simple no go".

You are trivializing the SF50 decisions and exaggerating the twin decision by quite a lot.

Mike C.

Why would you want to crash a perfectly good glider? I hear the Cirrus jet has a 14:1 glide ratio, my M600 has a 17.9:1 ratio, for me in cruise that gives me about 37 minutes and almost 100 sm of glide. So plenty of time to eat a snack, read a book, pick which state, then which city I want to land in. Then pull out the AFD and pick the airport that has the best on field food and service. From FL280 that equates to 29,000 square statute miles of options. Why would you want to crash? Plus the SF50 has a chute if you need it. Myself, I would just land the darn plane on a runway if I were in glide, which with the normal operating altitude of that aircraft and glide ratio, you will be.

Chuck, i'm with you regarding chute deployment. I like the concept of it. Having it as an option has merit. With some altitude to work with, I would asses my options and lean towards dead stick onto an airport or other suitable landing site. I don't like the concept of handing the airplane over to the insurance company if there is something I can do to save my bacon, and my airplane. Down low in scuzzy weather, pull the chute. Up high with time to think, my guess is there is a suitable aerodrome for a dead stick landing with a good outcome. My guess is the insurance company want's the pilot to deploy the chute regardless.

Now, dealing with it in real life is another matter!

I just flew NYC back to Atlanta VFR at 17.5k' and talked to nobody. Why? Because it's faster.

This is a really weird argument for a jet that requires a type rating.

Yes, if the engine is courteous enough to fail in cruise.

Because at 400 ft AGL, not any other options.

Even from high cruise, you may be in an area of low IFR, and even VFR, you have only one chance to make the airplane do something you don't fully practice ever.

The Eclipse with one engine operating is a surprisingly large fraction of the performance of an SF50 with one engine operating despite having half the thrust. Indeed, the Eclipse single engine service ceiling is FL350, 7000 ft higher than the SF50 can go.

Mike C.

Thanks for responding, this is an enjoyable conversation.


Agreed, but that kind of serves my point. Eclipse got the big stuff right (twin jet, very efficient, etc) and it's now a reasonably well engineered product but one factor keeping it from success is marketing/brand?



You're right. Isn't that what the SF50 is? Sure it could be faster and safer with another engine (and I understand your argument that there are no tradeoffs there) but Cirrus interacts a lot with their customers, and determined that the Vision Jet was the most likely way to get customers to part with their cash. Cirrus buyers didn't ask for Cirrus's take on an Eclipse/Mustang/Phenom 100.

This ultimately comes down to whether or not you think Cirrus buyers are dumb, naive, and uninformed. I don't want to get into that discussion. But Cirrus is a marketing and manufacturing company, not a charity and not an education company.



That's a Mustang or the new larger Eclipse Canada thing.



I go back and forth on this and agree with a lot of the points you've made here. Type rating aside, it's a TBM for half the price that'll end up running off the end of the runway more often than anything with a prop. It also has a bigger more flexible cabin and a parachute to convince your golf buddies it's safe.



Eclipse delivered 10% of their order book. Wikipedia says Cirrus has 600 orders, they're at 2.5%. FAA registry currently says there are 31, 17 of which are registered to Cirrus so presumably not yet delivered so you could say they're at 5%. Either way, Cirrus will have eclipsed Eclipse (see what I did there?) on this metric sometime in the first half of 2018.



Eclipse raised capital and structured their finances using a pro forma that described thousands of orders (you mentioned 2700). Wikipedia says Dayjet was 1400 of those, so half of their order book came from a capital-intensive startup that failed after taking 2% of their projected orders. To me, that's their market.

Commercial success isn't how many widgets you produce. It's building the right number of widgets for the right cost, and selling them at the right price to your target market such that you remain in business. Cirrus is on track to smoke Eclipse.



Well, yes. I think buyers are choosing the plane because it's a single instead of a twin (right or wrong), because it has a chute, because it's from a company that they trust and already have bought product from, because it's faster and bigger than the last product they bought (SR22), because it feels familiar. I also think those buyers looked around and said "what can I buy for $1mm (then 1.5mm, then 2mm, etc) that's new and bigger/faster/more comfortable than the SR22?" Not much, maybe a B58 or the small-winged Meridian.

100% agree that they'd have wider appeal had they built a twin. But they chose to focus on existing Cirrus owners.

Cessna killed the Mustang, Eclipse is holding on by the skin of their teeth, Embraer has under 200 Phenom 100's registered in the US and around 350 total over 10 years... How do you look at that market and convince your board that's where to jump in with a new product?

I just flew NYC back to Atlanta VFR at 17.5k' and talked to nobody. Why? Because it's faster.

It is amazing how literal so many posts are taken.
Especially mine!

If Cirrus built a twin engine monster plane that carried 7 people and was the size of the Phenom 300; everyone would point at the gap in the product line.
Cirrus builds a plane which competes with the Piper M500, and suddenly it is the wrong plane because of the location of the fan blades?

I think there is a touch of over analysis going on here.

Tim

In almost 4000 hours of flying in the last 10 years I have NEVER used ice protection. Not once. I turn it and let it cycle to test it and sometimes I turn it on when I have a little ice on the wings just for the novelty but not one time have I had to use it.

Also, yes, you climb over "some" weather. But more times than not all the jets are using the same gaps in the weather i'm using.

Also, we have satellite weather nowadays. I know what the weather will be hundreds of miles in advance. It's easy to plan accordingly. I never get stuck in weather.