"Neil Gould" wrote

Evolved from... what? What other VLJs will be delivered within the next
year?

Evolutionary compared with turboprop performance and price.

Cirrus, I don't see a company's history as a very good predictor of their
future success. People will buy the aircraft that they think represents a

The odds of Cessna being around in 20 years are outstanding. Even if the
Mustang is not a rousing success, it will still be supported by Cessna.
Cessna still continues to support every plane it ever made.

The odds of Eclipse being around in 20 years are unknown.

better choice for their mission, and since the VLJ market will be at least
in part defined by return on investment, I think that planes costing

I gather that means you believe in the concept of hundreds or more Eclipse
air taxis? Now that is very much an unproven business model. It is even
more of an unproven business model when you start calculating the payload of
an Eclipse. Charter operations almost never make a profit if the capital
investment in an airplane are considered; there are so many people who want
to buy an airplane that the free market has reduced charter costs such that
a charter airplane returns a modest return on incremental hourly costs but
no return on capital costs. I have yet to see a realistic spreadsheet of
any Part 135 charter operation which results in a net profit including both
the cost of capital and operating costs; there is no reason to believe the
Eclipse will be any different.

--------------------
Richard Kaplan

www.flyimc.com