Regarding the comment on their budget. Right now, we're trying to narrow down the list to aircraft that will get the job done reliably. My mentioning older aircraft is due to my thinking the Supermids are a little too much airplane for what they're trying to do, and the only justification to get one would be a comparable purchase price (and not-extravagant operating costs...which is why we're not talking about the Falcon 20
). It's a buyer's market right now isn't it?
I was looking at the Ultra actually, but can it make 1,300nm (likely into a bit of a headwind) with 7 on board? I've spoken to an Ultra pilot and he mentioned to me that they have to start looking really closely at anything over 1,000nm with a full boat (7 pax). How about the Citation VI or VII?
The Falcons are wayyy too much airplane for this IMO. I have access to a few....love them....wish they'd kept going in the midsize market, as we might have something to talk about then. Most of the runways in the Caribbean are 8,000+ feet. I don't see runway performance being an issue with any jet we look at, even in hot + wet conditions.
Just for giggles, how far can you get with 7pax on a Lear 60?
General wisdom is to purchase something that will do 80% of your required missions, then charter for the last 20%, but there's not really anything in the area to charter, so charter costs will be really high to get a larger / longer range aircraft out of Florida (positioning to the opposite end of the Caribbean).
I think the 800XP might be the one to beat on this. They may have to suck it up when taking 8 pax, but it seems to be a pretty big leap to the CL300 (which I think is quite a bit more airplane than they need).
Thoughts?
DB