Originally Posted by tuna hp

I don't understand what you're saying, 'performance tradeoffs don't matter between these planes'? Or are you saying that there are no performance tradeoffs between the planes?

And I don't know about the owners of your plane, but you're crazy if you don't think that runway performance could be a major factor in sales. If one plane has just substantially better runway performance, and if it means that over the owner's use, he's going to need fewer refueling stops, is going to be able to get in with closer airports a few times, etc, then thats a major factor. Especially if the customer is from a mining company, or an agricultural company, something like that, where they can anticipate needing to get out of relatively challenging runways. Or if their home base is a challenging runway. Aren't you the pilot here? It doesn't need to be 4,000' long at 5,000' altitude to mean that the plane couldn't get out at MTOW. There are lots of urban airports in the US and Europe where its the closest airport to the city center but has runways in the 5,000' to 6,000' range, which means that some planes could not get out at MTOW.

I'm sure you know a lot about these planes and I don't know why you're getting so defensive. Clearly there are differences between these planes. I was just hoping that you'd write about them.

(and yes, I understand what you have already said: that Dassaults have held their value and have lower operating costs. Really I think that they're the same thing: when fuel prices shot up, Dassaults kept their value while everything else plummeted because Dassaults were the fuel efficient alternative. But back when jet fuel was $1/gallon, total fuel cost was lower compared to maintenance and Dassaults ended up having about equal operating costs.)