as others have said, likely too low. tcas is pretty awesome (and yes, most military flights will use it), but it is (deliberately) muted/degraded at low altitudes (i think around 1500feet).
it’s actually really hard for private jets / charter (whether part 91 or part 135) to use dca. requirements include having an armed officer on board. as a result almost nobody flies charter into dca.
while it’s true that spacex is a private company, it’s widely known that they are highly profitable. they have many institutional investors, and a long line of people that would love to be on their cap table.
the article you linked to is more than a year old, and does acknowledge that at the time spacex was flirting with profitability. do you contend that they are not currently “profitable”?
also, many (maybe most?) privste companies deny employees who have options access to complete company financial statements.
I think you meant to say "single pilot passenger jet" that is fully certified, and if so, that statement is not correct. The Phenom, Citation, and several others are.
I suppose GP meant to say “single engine non-turboprop turbofan/turbojet private jet that are FAA certified to operate in the US with appropriate civilian licenses”.
And while there are countless single engine jet planes and many small business jets without lavatory, there indeed aren’t many (“jet” engine && single engine && business jet) designs, let alone civilian type certified models.
Certification is the process of getting an aircraft design/model approved by the FAA for sale/use. There are 3 phases for GA commercially available aircraft, type certification (design approved), production certification (manufacturing approved), and airworthiness certification (plane tested, and ready for sale to the public)
Usually when someone says a plane has received its certification they mean it’s ‘airworthiness certification’, so the final approval by the FAA.
Each commercially ised or sold aircraft has to come from a certified Desogn Organisation, has to be built by a certified Production Organisation (in most cases the same company, aerospace legallish Airbus and Boeing have a DO and a PO which arw separate entities as far as authorities are converned), needs an Type Certificate (achieved after successful flight testing and to be redone if there are configuration and design changes) and has to be maintained by a certified maintenance organisation and operated by a certified operator (continued airworthymess is a operator thing, just don't ask me any details on that, I work on the PO and touched some maintenance stuff in my life so far).
Usually, EASA and FAA cross certify, making it easier to get one if you have the other already. Fascinating stuff, aerospace certification.
Boeing skipped the step "to be redone if there are configuration and design changes" for the 737MAX, and smoothed over the differences with software. FAA was supportive of that rule-bending, and other countries followed along.
Yes and no. They din't skip it, the FAA acceptrd and certified the new design based data Boeing provided. Boeing should have, in my opinion, completely recertified the MAX instead of treating it as just a new 737 variant.
awesome to see the first real world example of a caps parachute deployment on the vision jet working out well.
the caps parachute results in “a good day for the passengers — walk away, bad day for the insurance company — plane will never fly again”
the vision jet also has a “safe return” feature that will 100% autonomously land at the nearest suitable airport.
both brs and safe return are designed to be initiated by a passenger, in the event of pilot incapacitation.
i’ve had the pleasure of flying on a vision jet before — it’s a really cool aircraft that flies almost as fast and high as much more expensive jets. and can be easily (realistically) flown by a single pilot.
> i’ve had the pleasure of flying on a vision jet before — it’s a really cool aircraft that flies almost as fast and high as much more expensive jets
It’s a really cool aircraft but It’s nowhere close to the speed or service ceiling of most private jets.
Here’s Citationmax departing LAX in a vision jet. It’s a beautiful video to watch but it seems like he is struggling to reach the Standard Instrument Departure (SID) altitudes for each waypoint, only able to do about 100 KIAS in the climb.
> It’s a really cool aircraft but It’s nowhere close to the speed or service ceiling of most private jets.
there's a recent story of a vision jet pilot who's been putting "treat me like a turboprop, I don't mind" in the comments of flight plans to let controllers know what they can expect performance wise from him (and to make them laugh).
It’s a cool plane but very much does not “fly almost as fast” as traditional jets. It’s super slow and sluggish in that regard and causes headaches for ATC because it can’t fly as fast or climb as fast as other jets. Think everyone cruising down a highway with nice spacing doing 65 MPH and then one person is doing 45 MPH… that’s what ATC has to work around.
It's in a strange spot because practically every other single engine jet aircraft is military, and I imagine it's tricky to drop a bigger engine in the vision jet without sacrificing cabin/cargo space. I liked the other comment comparing it to a turboprop. I'd say it's performance is something like turboprop+ but it's clearly not in the same category as other small passenger jets.
Agree it's awesome. Although the cruising speed is around 300 knots where a small bizjet would be over 400. That is more comparable to a fast propeller plane.
I am sure the plane can fly again on most cases, they just don't want the liability and they want to put "pressure" on the pilots to only deploy it when necessary.
A Cirrus pilot that loses an engine at a safe altitude will not think of deploying it because the plane will be gone.
I don’t think that’s the way insurance companies look at it - as I recall, I think they actually waive the deductible in the event of a chute deployment to encourage use of the system. Paying for an airframe is a lot cheaper than the inevitable wrongful death lawsuits.
i don’t think your point is a valid retort; when you’re paying a landlord you are receiving something of value that you want for yourself, just like when you pay for a cheeseburger.
> when you’re paying a landlord you are receiving something of value that you want for yourself
No I don't. I receive a temporary lease to something of value that is fundamentally necessary for meaningful existence in modern society. Landlords are pure middlemen - and while there's a place for middlemen in society to provide initial capital, at some point that value dwindles down to zero as that initial investment is repaid, and then dwindles past zero as the landlord continues to parasitically rent-seek despite contributing nothing that the tenants themselves could accomplish for far cheaper.
Your retort to my retort would be valid (or at least actually equivalent to your cheeseburger analogy) if - in exchange for my rent checks every month - I received ownership stake in the property and/or the company that owns it. Such an arrangement has more in common with a housing cooperative than with a typical landlord/tenant relationship.
