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be a Level-D simulator in the PA46 or TBM world because it is just too expensive. But, in the jet world, you will receive training in a Level-D simulator and help them pay for their return on investment (ROI) for that $35 million simulator. Suffice it to say that real simulator training is expensive, super expensive.
On top of that, simulator training is controlled by a few people. Want a Cirrus Jet? You’ll go to their factory training and take a checkride with their DPEs and pay for every bit of it. There’s no other option; they control the cost and your expenses. Want a Phenom jet? You will go to one of the few available Phenom simulators for training, costing you nearly $50k for the type rating. Ditto for nearly every other jet that you might consider purchasing. And, then, you’ll get to pay for mentor hours because this will be your first type rating, and the insurance company will want a credentialed CFI to sit in the right seat with you for 25-50 hours.
“Mentor training on top of the $50,000 simulator training?” you may ask. Yep, in the jet world, “initial training” is literally just that, the beginning. Jets fly faster, and the mentor training happens slower. You’ll get to not only pay that mentor for the mentor’s time but also for the mentor’s hotel, food, and logistics while you travel about for the first 3-6 months of your ownership of the jet. The financial “parasite drag” will have a firm attachment to your wallet by this time. You may have been successful by keeping your worst nightmare of an annual under wraps, but I assure you that you’ll not be able to keep your spouse from noticing the jet-powered expenditure burn rate at this point in your aviation career.
Staying on the topic of training, we must not overlook the significance of a 61.58 checkride. Yup...newbies to the jet world usually don’t appreciate the rigor of a 61.58 checkride. FAR 61.58 details that a jet pilot will take a checkride each year with an examiner who can administer a 61.58 checkride. Every year you operate a jet, you take a checkride, not just a training event. You’ll spend 3-5 days at the simulator facility doing ground and flight training, and then you’ll take a checkride with an examiner. It should not be confused as a “gimme checkride,” where you are subject to a checkride with a highly likely “pass” at the end of the training. In the SETP world, you go to “recurrent training,” where the requirements for obtaining the completion certificate are not anywhere comparable to the rigor of passing a checkride. It takes a day or two in the SETP world to complete recurrent training, and it doesn’t culminate in a checkride. In the jet world, you’ll spend five times the cost and five times the time, and then you get evaluated. The 61.58 checkride is a significant event with an opportunity to fail.
How do you pay for those jet engines? In the jet world, virtually every engine is on an “engine program” where you’ll pay several hundred dollars “by the hour” for your engines. At the end of each month, you’ll tally up the hours on your airplane and send a check to the company that manages the program on your engines. It will be optional,
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arguably, but 90+% of the jet world is “on programs” because the cost of a FOD incident or a hot start in the jet world is very expensive. The “jet culture” is to have engine programs.
You may ask, “Are the engine management companies making money on the engine programs?” Of course, they are! You could easily manage the operation and maintenance of your engines cheaply without a program. Still, almost no one does because the psychology in the jet world is so different from that of the turbo-prop world. In the jet world, a jet that “is not on programs” is significantly discounted by the marketplace because the buyers invariably want the risk-free assurance that the engines are OK. In the turboprop world, almost no engines are on programs. A turboprop on an engine program does not receive comparable credit from the marketplace because almost no one in the turboprop world values the engine programs. If you move to the jet world, you will quickly learn about pay-by-the-hour programs.
This marketplace difference translates into the jet world being significantly more expensive because you will pay as you go, feeling the cost of every flight hour at the end of each month. To be fair, the engine programs do provide a modicum of risk mitigation in case something happens to an engine. There are some wonderful stories where an engine ingested a bird or had an internal compressor problem, and the engine program fixed the problem quickly “for free.” But, those stories are few and far between compared to the jet pilots who come running back to the turboprop world reporting how the engine program cost sucked the life out of the fun of flying.
Although there are popular jets that are single-pilot approved, that doesn’t mean you’ll f ly your f lights single- pilot as an owner-flown pilot. Insurance companies dominate (or control) the aviation market, and unless you are a highly trained, highly experienced, more youthful pilot, you may not be approved for single-pilot operations. Or, you might be approved for single-pilot operations, but your coverage may be decreased, your premiums increased dramatically, or both. Many pilots enter the jet world only to find out that they age out quickly and then discover that the insurance companies want them to fly dual-pilot. In such circumstances, the owner is left with the option of moving down to a turboprop, reducing coverage, self-insuring, or paying the huge financial costs to have a second pilot onboard. The actual ceiling of a jet is much higher than a turboprop, but the proverbial “ceiling” for a jet pilot is lower than that of a turboprop pilot.
So, jets are sexy, fast, cool, and they sometimes fly over the weather. But, they are expensive to feed, expensive to operate, and require extensive training and evaluation. Is it worth it for you? Maybe. To some people, the jet is a bucket-list item, something they’ve always wanted to do. If you are that person and you have the financial means to make it happen, then knock yourself out and go buy a jet.
Having said all of that, I’ll tell you of a veteran space shuttle pilot friend of mine. When he comes to train with