PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Cobalt Aircraft
Thread: Cobalt Aircraft
View Single Post
Old 30th July 2010 | 07:39
  #24 (permalink)  
IO540
20 Anniversary
 
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
Maybe... Cirrus, and Socata and Mooney before them, have managed to sell a suprising number of IFR singles into Europe, in the vast majority of cases with no ice protection.

I think the salesman saying it is a tool for travelling is being less than honest. A tool for travelling needs 100% anti-ice and radar. Without these, your dispatch rate will be down to say 75% which is fine for "business travel" (as in meeting up with chums who you do business with) but is no good for real business travel (pre-scheduled customer visits).

And I say 75% even based on flying VMC on top enroute.

Interestingly, radar is a possibility in the Cobalt. Whether they will realise the value of it is another matter. But if they originally planned it as a jet, radar would have been a must.

European airways are empty of GA because too few pilots have an IR and too few airports have an IAP and most have limited opening hours; not because of lack of aircraft ice protection.

The other thing is more basic: is there really a market between the "SR22" level, and SE turboprops? A lot of salesmen think there isn't and that anybody with $700k can afford $2M. Together with the perceived need for pressurisation, and poor TP efficiency at low altitudes, this is why we see such a big gap between pistons and TPs.
IO540 is offline  
Reply