We have a phrase "out of the frying pan and into the fire".
This is bound to be true. One will end up being a guinea pig for a new airframe, new engine / control system, new avionics, a whole new load of avionics integration.
Buying a new piston retractable SEP a few years ago was bad enough, and that used proven everything. I still ended up with nearly all the avionics having to be replaced (under warranty but a huge hassle nevertheless).
Moving from single pilot piston operations to single pilot jet operations would be a move that I venture, would be truly only for the foolhardy.
I beleive as do most pro jet guys that two rated pilots in the jet cockpit is the only way to go.
I've never flown a jet but I don't believe this often-quoted phrase is correct, as put.
For starters, there are plenty of pilots who cannot grasp even a modern 150kt piston single - no matter how many hundreds of hours they fly with instructors. I have known of certain cases of these. Somebody with plenty of money but insufficient mechanical/technical brain to even drive a car (with a manual box) properly can get a PPL and fly a spamcan on sunny Sundays, but they will not get beyond that. I won't say any more but there are quite a few owners who always fly dual, with their own private instructor.
But, assuming the pilot has a decent technical brain and can grasp the concepts of operating something complicated, it's all down to cockpit workload, and the thing which determines cockpit workload is how much automation there is and how well it is all integrated. Many years ago you had a crew of five in a 4-engined piston airliner. Today a 747 with vastly more systems is flown by two pilots, and they do nothing most of the time.
The cruise speed of a jet isn't relevant because enroute you do nothing much anyway (it's on autopilot) and the departure/terminal phases are flown slowly, 200-ish kt max, and there are piston planes that go nearly as fast. I've done approaches, most of the way to the base leg / loc intercept, at a GS of ~ 210kt, in the TB20 (Vne=187kt), thanks to a massive tailwind combined with a -1000fpm descent rate from say FL160. Things happen fast... but not so fast that you can't sit there on autopilot and turn the heading bug on the HSI fast enough!
And here is why the Eclipse, D jet and the rest fail - the market men believe that there are thousands of SEP guys n gals out there who can fly their VLJ aircraft. There isnt and there wont be, ever!
The market won't be there IMHO but not because people can't fly them. It's because the demand isn't there for thousands upon thousands of jets, with a range no greater than a piston single and with overall utility not as good as a plain old turboprop.
I know lots of people "high up" think that skies full of VLJs ("flying out of Luton") will bring European ATC to a halt. I heard at a NATS seminar that the CAA was going to ban light jets from the UK unless dual pilot.... then some old jet pilot asked what about the SP Citations which have been flying around for years?
No answer to that one really... There was a news report last year about the German CAA mandating an ATPL for any jet in German airspace, but this seems to have died. They can't screw around with ICAO to that extent.
If a pilot is clever enough to get a jet TR or a conversion course or whatever it is called (for which he will need an IR and ~ 1k hrs TT or whatever) he will be able to fly any of these little jets, and safely.
If you want to move up a step, try a TBM or a Pilatus. The TBM will do everything an VLJ will do and more besides.
Couldn't agree more. There are plenty of used TBMs around, and there will be more as the 850 deliveries ramp up in 2007/08.