Is this a 525 thing? It really annoys me when companies use their leverage to extort revenue from their captive customers.

I just had my blow down bottle hydro'ed by Obrien on my V. $135. Turned it around in 24 hours. No mention of any proprietary seals.

It annoys me that this bottle is a 3 year hydro. That's taking it out way too often. It also has a 24 year life and has to be replaced at that time (2032 for me). It would cost only a few pounds to replace this with a 5 year hydro and infinite life bottle since it is so small. Then my costs to manage this bottle would go down. I can also use the extra few lbs up front, too.

This are the little annoying recurrent things that could be improved.

The allowance of leaving a past hydro bottle in place doesn't help for the emergency gear bottle because it gets exercised and refilled every gear inspection (every 3 years for me) and thus must be in hydro to be refilled. This is unlike the fire bottles which don't get exercised at all and they have an infinite service life.

Mike C.

I think many here might have a distorted view of my involvement with the airplane. It sounds like I spend hundreds of hours a year working on my plane. I do not.

I actually spend very little time on my airplane maintenance, I hardly ever do anything to the plane directly. My main activity is diagnosis from symptoms, and sourcing parts and services. Sourcing is easy, there are the well known places for new parts such as Textron, Aircraft Spruce, Boeing, etc. Then I have an email list of salvage yards and when I need a part, I just send out an email to them all and see what I get. For services, I ask around. This really takes very little time.

For example, ACM overhaul, my MU2 mechanic told me about Qualified Technologies. They overhauled my ACM turbine and heat exchanger for $10,500. Textron wanted $50K (and with a high core charge that might result in charge backs, too).

For all of 2024, I probably spent less than 2 hours doing any of that for my plane. Nothing is broken, no major inspections, no parts to source. I simply call my mechanic to gets things done, much like the other owners you talk about. I basically just flew the airplane.

If you look at the cost savings versus the hours I put in, I am making well over $1000 per hour in my Citation maintenance oversight. That's a good return for my time!

I have literally spent more time debugging other people's Citations than my own. They either post on CJP or email me directly and I suggest what could be going wrong, or what test they could do to isolate the problem. Shops lack diagnosis skills and they general use the "replace the most expensive box first" tactic. A little bit of diagnosis can save absolute tons of money.

For example, a legacy owner had a case where he couldn't raise the gear. When I had that problem, the shop replaced the squat switch on the left gear leg costing me about $4K parts and labor. This was just weeks into my flying of the plane. What I learned is that this could have been fixed with a tiny adjustment of the squat switch. My switch replacement "fixed" the problem but only because the new switch was recalibrated when installed. I told the other owner how to do that, basically turn one screw a 1/4 turn, takes 5 minutes and fixed his problem.

Back in 2023, I sent you my old squat switch (which was just fine despite being removed) and you used it on your airplane. So I ended up with the expensive unnecessary fix on my plane, but I helped two others fix their Citations with my knowledge and left over parts fix there airplanes for nearly nothing. I spent WAY more time having the shop replace the switch than I did figuring out how to fix the other two airplanes.

Some people do Sudoku puzzles, I do Citation puzzles. It is very rewarding to solve these issues.

The benefit to me is that I get to dive into other people's problems and learn what they are. This improves my systems knowledge, and may also clue me into a problem I could be having or could prevent if I catch it early.

For the fire bottle relief letter from Textron, I spent 30 minutes on that with my inquiry to Textron. The cumulative savings from that among all the owners is huge. I'd say that return on my time was worth it. The whole fire bottle system on Citations is actually kind of useless and I wish it could be removed, but getting relief on the fire bottle hydro is a good step forward. Maybe someday I'll work on an STC to remove the fire bottle system, but that's a much harder hill to climb. It would save about 50 lbs of useless weight and squib replacements.


That's all I've been saying, but Chip seems to need to deny my results exist or are available to others. He is wrong about that, anybody can do them. It isn't that hard and there are resources to help you do it. Resources like type forums really help.

If people are being told they can fly a CJ3 for less than a V, they are being deceived. Textron treats those airplanes very differently with the leverage they have. You have significantly fewer choices as an owner with the 525 series. It is like the printer vs ink revenue model now for the later airplanes, Textron wants you to buy expensive ink and they make decisions based on that for the inspection programs, parts prices, etc.

Mike C.

Agreed.

The hydro test is based on bottle fatigue due to pressure cycling. The DOT rules assume some pressure cycling rate, like once per day or more often, whereas in aviation, we cycle the bottles hardly at all. A gear bottle gets cycled every 3 years, typically. It would last a 1000 years. Fire bottles don't get cycled at all. Oxygen bottles get cycled more often, but still only a dozen times per year at most, I would expect.

Yet we tear these systems apart all the time introducing potential fault and problems. I've never heard of a bottle failure from pressure, but I have heard legions of stories about problems from bottle removal. For example, an emergency gear bottle valve was installed wrong so that it would not have worked during an emergency gear extension. Or an oxygen system now leaks when it didn't before. And so on.

There is little interest among the OEMs or the FAA to change this, sadly. The industry and regulators do not acknowledge the risks of maintenance induced faults.

This is one reason I really like the LUMP on my plane. It gets torn apart half as often which means half as many chances to frack things up, and less wear and tear each time. This is a major savings on legacy airplanes that the 525 series does not enjoy.

Imagine how much more economical a piston airplane would be if the annual was every 3 years. That's basically what I have on the jet. This is one reason the jet is costing me no more to maintain than the MU2 (which had a 12 month cycle). if you count the fact I had to fly the MU2 to service, the jet is actually less since it is maintained at home base.

Mike C.

But that's the main point, I have a choice, you really don't. When any economic system has no choice, guess what happens to the costs?

I can fly my JT15D past TBO. You can't.

I can choose my HSI or OH shop. You can't.

I can choose to not be on a program. You realistically can't.

Over a 5000 hour TBO period, a pair of FJ44 cost $2.5M in payments in today's dollars. With TAP payments increasing at double the rate of inflation, the projected net present value of that is approaching $4M for a 150 hour per year flyer.

If you fly less than 150 hours, then your effective cost is increased.

In my case, if I fly less or more, it costs me less or more. My expenses basically scale with use. For a 525 owner, not so much.

Every 525 owner is renting their airplane from Williams.

Mike C.

How has your mileage flown been year over year with the V vs the MU2? Do you find you're doing the same mileage but now doing it faster and therefore spending fewer hours in the air? Or has the speed and range and comfort increased the trips you do in it and increased the hours you spend in the air vs the MU2?

Our plane is currently on parts and engine programs so we have a simple little excel sheet that will tell us based on fuel price if it's better to be lower and faster with a higher fuel burn but fewer minutes or higher and slower with more minutes but less fuel. Generally it favors being in the air for the least amount of time. While most of our trips are 2 hours or more, we occasionally have a stop around 45 minutes and are heavily penalized (20% increase) if our cycle count is greater than our hours for the month, so we try and factor that in too. It's rare, but it does happen.

Chip-

Roughly speaking, I fly 100-150 hours per year. if the plane flies faster, more miles. I find more reason to go places if the plane is faster. This was true when I had a 120 knot airplane and when I have a 400 knot airplane.


Because I am not on programs, my computation shows that I gain if I slow down a bit, so I have been backing off max thrust in cruise a bit which lower fuel usage some per mile. This could also increase my HT blade life, too, with lower temps.


I forgot about the cycle penalty under the TAP program. That is something you have to watch.

I didn't realize it was per month, I thought it was per year. If you happen to have a month with a lot of short flights for some reason, you get dinged, even if you have another month with 3 hour legs. A short hop to a neighboring airport ends up being an expensive thing.

I have no direct cycle penalty. Each cycle counts towards the life limits in the engine, but I average that over the whole TBO cycle. I'm running about 1.3 hours per cycle generally. Another way to say this is that I'm not usually close to where I want to be. It is a very rare month where my landings exceed my hours.

Mike C.

Sorry I wasn't clear, my cycle penalty is for the parts program only. We have Pratts on the Phenom and they do not have a cycle penalty. The parts cycle penalty escalates as well so if you have shorter flights it increases from 5% to I don't know what but last month was 20%.

On the flip side if you have longer flights for the month it does reduce the price as well. But the most I've seen is a 10% reduction so it doesn't seem to scale evenly in both directions.

Chip-

Got it, forgot you aren't a 525 operator.

The cycle penalty does exist for FJ44 which is what I was thinking about. Williams has a "datum flight profile" which assumes a 72 minute flight per cycle (1.2 hours). If you fall below that, then you can get dinged. I think they average over 6 months, however, based on the contract language I saw in 2020.

The absolute worst pattern for an FJ44 owner is under 150 hours per year with a lot of short flights. That will drive up your effective rate per hour quite a bit.

Short flights are not as big a deal for the JT15D owner as it doesn't affect HSI or OH intervals. It only affects cycle limited parts.

Mike C.

That's all I've been saying, but Chip seems to need to deny my results exist or are available to others. He is wrong about that, anybody can do them. It isn't that hard and there are resources to help you do it. Resources like type forums really help.

If people are being told they can fly a CJ3 for less than a V, they are being deceived. Textron treats those airplanes very differently with the leverage they have. You have significantly fewer choices as an owner with the 525 series. It is like the printer vs ink revenue model now for the later airplanes, Textron wants you to buy expensive ink and they make decisions based on that for the inspection programs, parts prices, etc.

Mike C.

Why does that make it apples to apples? Why is not simply “X miles per year at Y cost per mile, with similar or better reliability and safety” a better comparison? You want to dictate that the game is played a certain way. Mike wants to stop playing that game.


Mike makes a pretty compelling case with evidence that is not true. The CJ3 case has an assortment of issues like required programs where Textron has stacked the deck making it impossible to play the game the other way.

I buy the argument that some owners would rather play the game Textrons way because they have need for level budgets or are unwilling to do the legwork to find a different way. But I don’t think you can claim that a CJ3 can be operated like Mike does just by having the right owner, because of the way the market conditions are different. I’d like to see you document how, if you really have those numbers.

Because it is not true.

There is no way a $5M CJ3 is cheaper to operate than my $1.5M V. Just can't be done, even if the CJ3 maintenance was FREE. That's $300,000 per year in capital expenses. Then there are programs. There is no LUMP. Insurance is higher. And so on. Stack it all up, the CJ3 is seriously more costly to operate.

The only way you can make your case is to have willful blindness to the total cost of ownership. Yes, the CJ3 uses less fuel, but that is essentially the only thing it does cheaper, everything else is more expensive, and sometimes hugely so.

Even if I bought into an engine program and took it to a service center, the CJ3 is still more expensive, all costs considered. Fortunately, I am not forced to do that so my economic advantage is huge.

if your argument is that CJ3 is in a different class of airplane, I agree. People who buy it clearly want something else than a V and are willing to pay more to fly it. I can't afford to fly a CJ3. I can afford to fly a V. The V is cheaper.

My numbers are published, honest, and others can do the same as I can if they so choose. It is an option and it does work. It is not as difficult or as time consuming as you think it is, or as rare, either. There are a number of BT members who are doing it, too.

Mike C.

I just read a post on CJP of an owner with an M2 less than 10 years old who knows his 9 year old precoolers are due at his next Doc 10 inspection coming up this year. He went ahead an ordered a set (~$25K) so he wouldn't end up AOG when/if they are not available during his inspection. He did this based on the postings of other 525 series owners having precooler issues that ended up AOG if their precoolers are bad.

The M2 owner paid attention, learned what the issue was, researched their aircraft records for their inspection and life limited part status, and made a preemptive move to improve their situation by getting involved in the purchase of parts.

How is that level of owner involvement materially different than what I do? It really isn't. I've preordered parts such as tires and ignitors for the very same reasons, and I keep tabs on my upcoming needs and try to optimize my costs and down time when I can.

Just because you own a newer airplane doesn't mean you can simply ignore what is going on with your airplane maintenance. It is and always will be the case that the more attention you pay to the situation, the better your results will be.

Mike C.

Mike… at this point you are arguing with yourself

I’m rooting for you!

Let’s compare a 2006 Encore with a 2006 CJ3

That would be a fair comparison would it not?

We can’t talk service center maintenance to service center maintenance…

We can’t talk on program to on program…

We can’t even talk on program to normal engine reserves…

Because either of those things makes the CJ3 cheaper to operate.

So then, it’s the CJ3 is $5M and it’s the cost of the money that makes it more to operate than Mike’s V. Yes, but it is 15 YEARS NEWER!!

I paid a lot more for my 2023 Denali than my neighbor did for his 2008 Suburban.

Why does that make it apples to apples? Why is not simply “X miles per year at Y cost per mile, with similar or better reliability and safety” a better comparison? You want to dictate that the game is played a certain way. Mike wants to stop playing that game.


Mike makes a pretty compelling case with evidence that is not true. The CJ3 case has an assortment of issues like required programs where Textron has stacked the deck making it impossible to play the game the other way.

I buy the argument that some owners would rather play the game Textrons way because they have need for level budgets or are unwilling to do the legwork to find a different way. But I don’t think you can claim that a CJ3 can be operated like Mike does just by having the right owner, because of the way the market conditions are different. I’d like to see you document how, if you really have those numbers.