Originally Posted by
aerobat77
The 551 is a fine but elderly bird without fancy stuff like autothrottle or sophisticated vnav.
But since this one was cleared to FL360 it must have been RVSM approved and therefore had the required equipment installed. One of the postings further up this thread has a link to a sales advert of this same airframe whilst on it's original N registration. You can clearly see that some modern avionics have been fitted. I would assume that it had some form of altitude pre-select available ("altitude alert" is required for RVSM certification and one usually does not come without the other). If it was climbing in "flight level change" mode (which is speed/mach hold in Cessna language) with the throttles set to climb thrust it will eventually and safely reach FL360, however long that takes. Therefore I am not convinced that the pilot actively flew the plane during the entire climb. He may well have dialled in 36.000ft when he received the clearance and fainted any time thereafter.