How much time does the 1 squid who said, "get an MU2" have in either the MU 2 or the AC 690? He says he flys copilot on a Lear 60 out of TEB, but if you read his profile, others don't buy it. How much time do you have in either one?
My first real flying job was in a AC 690, back in 1979, flying cancelled checks at night, BOS-JFK-DET-JFK-BOS, depart BOS about 9pm, arrive back about 0600. 4 nights a week, M-Friday morning.
I have well over 4,000 hours of AC 690 time, most of it in just one tail number, N9166N. In all that time, I never had a problem with the airplane and we flew it through some very nasty wx, 4 nights a week, and we never cancelled for snow, or fog, or ice, or anything else. Our job was to show up and fly, period. We were young and dumb, but the airplane saved our stupid asses many times. The pay was $150/week for what was usually about 25 hours flying per week. That's right, about $6 per hour, for flying a twin engine turbo prop all night in crap weather. And I was thrilled to do it, because I was 19 and looking to build time.
Before my boss bought the AC 690's (this was a Part 135 ops. out of BOS, they had 4 AC 690's for night freight, and a Lear 23 for daytime charter) he flew the -then new- MU 2, which had just come out, this was about 1976? I can't recall exactly, but anyway, he HATED the MU 2, said it was a POS, said it had -issues- with it's little rudder on a V1 cut, no room in side, a low max gw. compared to the AC 690 and sure enough, it ended up having a bad accident rate once they started selling them. They were cheap, but poorly designed. The AC 690 on the other hand, was built "strong like bull" and had an excellent safety record.
Friends don't let friends fly MU 2's...
