a CJ3 landed here (KCMR) today. Nice fellow, great plane.

The field elevation is 6800msl and the DA at 9am was 9500'. It will likely hit 10,000 after noon.

I was curious of the TO performance on a day like today. Our field is 6000' long.

There are some specs for lower elevations, and they are reasonable 4500ish at 35C (5000 msl).

Whats it like up high and hot?

I flew one for several years and frequented KTEX. As I recall we were essentially unrestricted at gross weight coming out of there. Certainly there were conditions that would not allow us to leave, such as a tail wind over the limit (field is one way out), or an insanely high temperature. But we would routinely come out of there at 75 degrees F, 6 pax and bags, and fuel for our nonstop run to Orlando (4200-ish lbs). No sweat.

Just ran performance using the current METAR. 370 lb weight restriction. Pretty insignificant—could still either fill all the seats or go 1000+nm out of there. The CJ3 is fantastic at everything except for going fast in cruise.

Second that. Mach .737 (as I recall) is definitely a weak point in an otherwise stellar airplane.

Launched yesterday in a cj3 at 5500ft, 39c. Had to leave about 1100lbs off but left a bit more on a 6000ft runway. The 3+ is a fantastic airplane.

Until the Phenom 300 came along I’d argue that being able to operate out of small airports closer to where pax want to go make up the lost time in cruise. But the latest P300E has about the same field performance and does .80!

There's only so much you can do with a straight wing. The p300e is in a different league of fuel burn and maintenance cost. For what the cj3 is I think it does it phenomenally well. 420+ knots at 840pph ain't no slouch and not that noticable on 2 hour trips.

The cj4s semi swept wing allows a few more mach's.

I downloaded the p300 profile in FlightAware. It doesn’t seem that much faster than the cj3 unless you are flying in the lower 30s but then you lose your range. Did I miss something?

The best speed for the Phenom 300 is FL300 - FL330, that will give you about .74 - .77 depending on weight/temps, etc. Fuel burns in this range will be approx. 210 - 230 GPH.

The best fuel burn is FL450 and that will give you about .70 - .73 depending on weight, temps, etc. This will yield a full burn of 131 - 135 GPH.

Long range cruise will slows down A LOT, I believe that LRC is .60 but I don't use it so I could be mis-remembering, I would have to look it up. My pax didn't buy the airplane to go slow.

This is all real world experience based on 1600 hours in the airplane, and no, it isn't what the books says. The book says its a .78 airplane, that speed is rare. Fuel burns are reasonably close to book though.

The issue of late has been that ISA is a pipe dream, ISA +7 - ISA +13 is more the norm these days it seems to me.

Brad

Even up there? I thought it got cooler as you climbed.

Thanks for all the input, guys.

It seems now that we're offering JetA, there's more turbine traffic.

One gentleman, a few months ago, managed to blow both tires on his 3rd landing attempt with an early model Citation. Granted he was in his '80s.

No worries, he called for a mechanic from Phoenix (ours wasn't 'qualified according to him).

That's interesting. Wonder if that's a discernable trend when looked at over several decades.

Might explain why we are losing the glaciers on Mt. Rainier in Washington state.

We definitely hope to visit you one of these days to take the train up to the Grand Canyon. Was hoping to do it last month (I assume the temps and crowds during the summer are insane?) but couldn't make it happen. Maybe in the Fall.

I am shopping for a Citation I so glad to hear you have Jet-A!

I feel like that cruise speed in a jet is all in our heads.

My friend that flies a Citation X says the hot days when it won't go .97 are miserable for him...

Yet between climb holds, terminal speeds, vectors etc they all arrive at the destination within a few minutes of each other.

280 vs 445 true? Yea that moves the car reservation time a good amount.

410 to 445? Not a material difference in reality. The perception makes us antsy af for sure.

#bringontheheat

Yeah, but nothing is more annoying than being stuck behind a slow guy

When you are doing a PBI-TEB type route along with everyone else, and you can't get 450 'cuz someone is doing .73 up there, and you want to go .80, it's first-world problem annoying. (Is this how Citation X/other fast jet drivers feel all the time?)

On a ~2100 nm stage length (think TEB-VNY) the Citation X going .90 gets there about a half-hour faster than a jet doing .80 M.

Bottom line, I mostly agree with you that it becomes a "nah, my jet gets there faster" type debate that matters less in the real world.

A lot of times the slower jet can get the passengers to their meeting in a shorter time by going into a smaller airport closer to the meeting.

While a GE powered Falcon 20 was not that fast enroute it would run over most everything in descent back in the 80's and 90's when I flew them. Vne 390K and Vmo .88 and we did redline when we could. I did hate getting slowed to follow a Citation like I fly now, Vne 292K and Vmo .755.