Jacko, I used to say that anything below 1000nm was faster in the twin. After that commercial wins in time, door to door.
IMHO to do comparisons between GA and CAT you need to have a plane which has a decent mission capability.
Absolutely. To compete with CAT over a typical 500 nm short-haul direct flight, you need at least a C172, or preferably a bushplane with 2-3 hours more endurance and one which is equipped for relaxed cloud flying in lower airspace.
Of course, if you want to get from, say, Selkirk to Nurnberg, you have to change at Amsterdam, adding an hour or more to the CAT direct flight “overhead” of about 4 hours (travel to and from airport, parking, security, spare time for contingencies, car hire at destination…). In that case, any aeroplane which doesn’t need a runway can still beat CAT by an hour or two over seven or eight hundred miles.
Over 800 nm, CAT starts to claw back the time wasted in cars, buses, parking lots and airport queues, but it still lacks the flexibility and cargo capacity offered by a decent bushplane.
Snoopy wrote:
As this topic is about price points is there any 2 million dollar new price plane out there that can offer at least a try to compete with airline travel?
PA46 Piston. Pressurised. FL250, 210knots. Is closest you can get without going to a turboprop in the 250kt+ area. $1.2mn
You can almost get there with the M500 turboprop version at just over 2mn. FL280, 270kts.
It is true that most of us fly for pleasure, but that’s a different discussion.
IMHO to do comparisons between GA and CAT you need to have a plane which has a decent mission capability. Otherwise, that will be by far the biggest determining factor. And then you need at least a pressurised turboprop…
New? M600, M500 pretty much it. 10 year old planes and the market opens up considerably.
There’s too much radiation up there anyway. Flying low is a healthy luxury.
As this topic is about price points is there any 2 million dollar new price plane out there that can offer at least a try to compete with airline travel?
I know a turbopeop makes more sense (range, short field-able, paylod) but they have a higher price.
A pressurized 200 knot DA62 for 1,5 million would be intriguing.
Snoopy wrote:
Wouldn’t it make sense for 5 people to start a company that owns a Cirrus Jet? 400k buy in per person, full warranty on airframe and engines etc…
Sure, 400k gets a lot of airline tickets. Or a plane that is a viable alternative in many scenarios.
Getting people to stump up for the maintenance programmes would be the problem. However it is at least predictable assuming they have TAP Blue for the engine and the equivalent of proparts.
I suspect that the mission capability of the Cirrus Jet won’t be what people expect of a “jet”. It doesn’t go anywhere near high enough, for a start.
Wouldn’t it make sense for 5 people to start a company that owns a Cirrus Jet? 400k buy in per person, full warranty on airframe and engines etc…
Sure, 400k gets a lot of airline tickets. Or a plane that is a viable alternative in many scenarios.
AdamFrisch wrote:
But I had a case last year where I had to throw away 3 international tickets due to my work schedule changing last minute. They were not refundable or open tickets, and where the cost of changing them was higher than buying a new one. I wasted about $6K. In such a scenario, an economical personal plane would have saved me money.
But presumably you don’t know at the time of purchase which tickets you’ll need to bin and which you don’t, so it’s academic. Unless you just take a view of never to fly commercial, in which case the issue it will never arise.
