Eclipse 500

That puts things into a bit of perspective but let us clarify this a bit
more.

First of all, let us talk about high performance piston singles. No doubt
there are pilots with poor judgment there. But there is no way you can tell
me it is not possible for a businessman who takes piloting very seriously to
fly a Malibu or P210 or other high performance piston single 100 hours per
year to a professional and highly acceptable level. I reject the argument
that someone cannot do this well because he has other things on his mind --
if that were the case then we should ground airline pilots going through
divorce and we should also ground all airline pilots this year since they
all have huge financial stress. Along these lines, there is no NTSB or
other document that has ever suggested a 100-hour per year pilot who attends
recurrent training cannot safely fly a Malibu - no such document exists.

Yes, I am a light aircraft instructor. I also fly a high performance piston
single for personal trips. I fly over 400 hours per year. It so happens I
am also a physician. Yes, I believe I fly to professional standards. And
I know lots of my students who are entrepreneurs or partners in various
professional practices and fly 100-150 hours per year and whom I would
entrust to fly my children. And I know such pilots whom I would prefer not
to fly with. Each case is different -- let us not generalize.

As for the new light jets, I will say upfront that I do not have experience
with jets so I will to some extent defer to your judgment. It certainly is
intuitively understandable that the skills to fly at 400 knots are quite
different than those to fly at 200 knots. I do have lots of concern
regarding how a piston pilot will be able to step-up to such jets; perhaps
it will require an extensive mentoring process by which a new VLJ pilot
flies as copilot for a year or so after buying such a jet. Perhaps you can
suggest other training and proficiency standards. I suspect the "dropout"
rate for new VLJ pilots will be a lot higher than for new high performance
piston pilots. Set the bar as high as you want but I think it is quite
unfair to overgeneralize and say de facto that a 100 hour per year pilot
cannot be professional in flying a VLJ; set your criteria based on
performance, not by an unrealistically high minimum number of annual flight
hours and certainly not by some stereotype of who you think is qualified to
be a pilot.


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

www.flyimc.com

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005 21:52:24 -0400, "Richard Kaplan"
wrote:

That puts things into a bit of perspective but let us clarify this a bit
more.

First of all, let us talk about high performance piston singles. No doubt
there are pilots with poor judgment there. But there is no way you can tell
me it is not possible for a businessman who takes piloting very seriously to

Yes, I am a light aircraft instructor. I also fly a high performance piston
single for personal trips. I fly over 400 hours per year. It so happens I
am also a physician. Yes, I believe I fly to professional standards. And
I know lots of my students who are entrepreneurs or partners in various
professional practices and fly 100-150 hours per year and whom I would
entrust to fly my children. And I know such pilots whom I would prefer not
to fly with. Each case is different -- let us not generalize.


Love this forum for the conversation it stimulates.

I have two physician friends that are pilots.

#1 - Great pilot. Owns a homebuilt Glassair and a glider. No ego.
You have to ask him what he does for a living to find out. Flys maybe
150 hours a year. I'd go to the moon with him. Takes flying very
seriously.

#2 - Scares the hell out of me. Owns a Bonanza and will probably
partner with another on an Eclipse if he lives long enough to get it.
Flys about 250 hours a year commuting to his other house and boat.
Eat up with the god syndrom and makes stupid decisions in most
everything he does except when he's cutting on someone.

#1 and possibly guys like you don't worry me a bit. My concern is
until the VLJ's come out, all the #2's killing themselves in light
aircraft have been off the public radar screen. As soon as that
starts happening in jets things will not be the same.

Think we have beat this to death. Good luck and keep the blue side
up.

P.S. Sometimes there is truth in humor. One of my favorites -

The three most dangerous things in aviation are -

1. A doctor in a Bonanza
2. A baseball player in a Citation
3. Two flight instructors in a Cessna 150

Have a good one.

On 4 Jul 2005 16:19:54 -0700, "karl gruber"
wrote:

You can still buy a MUCH better used Learjet for the same money.

Aren't the op costs for a Lear 23/24/25 extremely high? And no single
pilot ops? Hence the sub $1M pricetag?

-Nathan

So in the end we agree... there are good and bad apples in every bunch.
Judge each by its merits and do not generalize.

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

www.flyimc.com

On Wed, 6 Jul 2005 22:20:00 -0400, "Richard Kaplan"
wrote:



So in the end we agree... there are good and bad apples in every bunch.
Judge each by its merits and do not generalize.

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

www.flyimc.com


Guess we do. There are incompetents out there that will now be able
to afford a jet! ;-)

Recently, Don Hammer posted:

On Wed, 6 Jul 2005 22:20:00 -0400, "Richard Kaplan"
wrote:



So in the end we agree... there are good and bad apples in every
bunch. Judge each by its merits and do not generalize.

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

www.flyimc.com


Guess we do. There are incompetents out there that will now be able
to afford a jet! ;-)

Jets were always affordable, if one could afford $800k + for an airplane.
Look in Trade-A-Plane for an L39 or Mig.

I think it's a very responsible move on the part of Eclipse that they
won't sell you one of theirs if you can't pass the training.

Neil

As a guy who spends 90% of his time above FL310, I have some different
concerns about the Eclipse and VLJ's (very light jets) in general.

Class A airspace continues to become saturated as airlines have added,
and continue to add, RJ's. Also, the success and increase of jet
fractional ownerships and corporate jets has changed the demographics of
the upper flight levels since 9-11. To make room for all this traffic,
the US has gone to RVSM, but the ATC system is STILL old fashioned in
the way they handle all this traffic and pilots that fly up there must
be very diligent! It's not the controller's fault, it's the government
and their reluctance to upgrade an antiquated system.

With the explosion of RJ's and the sad fact that the airlines flying
these aircraft are unwilling to pay their pilots a decent salary for
flying them, the experience level and hiring criteria has been greatly
reduced. The FAA, NTSB, and aircraft insurance company's are realizing
that this is causing safety concerns and has contributed low experience
in the cockpit to some recent RJ incidents. High performance aircraft
and low experienced pilots is a dangerous mix.

My concern with VLJ's is that pilots with hefty bank accounts can afford
them, but all the training in the world won't make up for the experience
they need to fly them safely. That can only be obtained one way...by
actually flying. You can fly a simulator all day for many days, but it
is no substitute for the "real" thing.

This isn't something new, we have seen this scenario from the early
years in aviation. ie. the "more money than ability" saga with piloting
airplanes. The only worse scenario is the "more money and EGO than
ability" saga. The Beechcraft Bonanza was sort of the "VLJ" of the 60's
& 70's...if you know what I mean. (even though is was / is a great
airplane)

The airlines have handled this experience problem by hiring experienced
pilots to begin with, putting these pilots through stringent training,
and then pairing them up with 1 or 2 experienced pilots in the cockpit
as they began their career. Usually a new pilot at the airlines waited
and flew as a copilot for 8-12 years before their seniority allowed them
to move up to the Captain seat. By then, they had a fair amount of
experience and were ready. Unfortunately, this won't be the case with
the VLJ revolution.

Hopefully my concerns will not bear fruit, but I am very skeptical about
this new era we about to enter with very high performance aircraft,
flown by very low performance pilots, in a very overloaded environment,
and controlled by a very old fashioned ATC system.

Best,

BJ



Neil Gould wrote:

Hi all,

I was very impressed by the article on the Eclipse 500 in the latest AOPA
magazine. After so much skepticism, criticism, and so forth, it appears
that the promised aircraft is about to be delivered. I was particularly
impressed by the description of the development process, and by the
comprehensive training program that is being created. It's nice to see
such forward-thinking being implemented in today's GA environment.

What is your reaction to this plane?

Neil

"Neil Gould" wrote in message

I think it's a very responsible move on the part of Eclipse that they
won't sell you one of theirs if you can't pass the training.

That is a meaningless move since it will not be long until there is a market
for used Eclipse jets.

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

www.flyimc.com