AE300 is quite a bit heavier – not really a direct replacement.
Heavier yes. Direct replacement is not possible in any case when changing engine to another type. The 180hp Austro engine is AE330.
When will we ever learn that until these things are certified, they might as well not exist? The same applies to new aircraft types, where is the Pipistrel Panthera? The entire world of certification is completely broken.
Either there are dozens of incompetent companies who just cannot produce a product that beats decades old stuff that is worse than 40 years ago, or the ceriticarion monopolies in Cologne and the US are broken.
I suspect the latter, and I wish these companies luck, but I fear they are tilting at windmills
Monopolies with the ‘wrong’ incentives, if I may add. If you’re a certification officer, unless there is a very specific culture of promoting innovation, you have zero upside in encouraging things, against a severe career risk if you approve something that’s put into question with hindsight later on.
We saw the same in financial services, with the result that incumbent were protected at the expense of consumers and the stability of the system. After the crisis, regulators woke up and adopted a dual pronged approach of putting the incumbents under a lot of pressure (MiFiD II, Basel III, AML2 etc.), while allowing consumer friendly innovation to flourish (open banking for ex.). I’m not sure what event could do the same in aviation, nor that we should wish for one…
Cobalt wrote:
Either there are dozens of incompetent companies who just cannot produce a product that beats decades old stuff that is worse than 40 years ago, or the ceriticarion monopolies in Cologne and the US are broken.
Certification may be expensive but if it were much cheaper, new planes and engines still couldn’t compete. Uncertified kit built aircraft are only competitive in the market because of the opportunity for the builder to utilize free labor, meaning his own. Otherwise, the aircraft market is the many nice planes and engines already in existence. There is nothing wrong with them, I think quite the contrary given that they’re built to last forever… and market values are low enough that new aircraft and engines at any imaginable price have only a very limited application. Most consumers won’t chose to buy new when good used is better value. Maybe in 30 years that situation will change, not now.
People and politicians can dream up all the faults and crises they want, and even create local market conditions, but the broader market disagrees… and its right 
Personally, I’m very happy to be owning and flying in probably the most economical time to be doing it, for the average guy, ever.
Cobalt wrote:
I suspect the latter, and I wish these companies luck, but I fear they are tilting at windmills
Certification could be more efficient, anything could, but I think the main issue is a disciplined, rational market speaking against new, intrinsically costly designs and new factory built OEM production.
There is a significant number of people who have no desire to be their own mechanic, and the fast build kits and build assist industry that has developed in the US is a strong indication of that. They also don’t want the old used aircraft and the problems that come with them, from reliability to the hassle that comes with managing inevitable upgrades.
So this stuff could compete if certification were not broken, just not in the segment of the enthusiast who enjoys doing their own engine swap. The price difference between certified and uncertified identical stuff is ridiculous, and ranges from 2x to 100x for simple spares, with regulators enforcing monopolies and encouraging vendor practice that would be illegal in any other industry.
Of course an engine with STC for an airframe is more expensive because the vendor does quite a bit of design and validation work that otherwise would be down to the owner/builder, and very few homebuilders would be capable of doing that on their own so would broadly need the same work done except for the regulatory rubber stamp.
One way an engine like this will become viable is for the owners to get the STC and then go bust, and somebody acquiring the company for a low amount and then producing and selling the engine not having to recover the development and certification cost.
Either there are dozens of incompetent companies who just cannot produce a product that beats decades old stuff that is worse than 40 years ago, or the ceriticarion monopolies in Cologne and the US are broken.
There is a 3rd option: Not actually trying to sell the product (to GA) but getting peripheral benefits.
Companies develop new aircraft engines as a baloon floating exercise, while pursuing non-GA markets which don’t need certification and can generate not only a more rapid cash flow but also more conventional investors.
With planes, like the Panthera, the projects I have seen were just part-time projects to which you allocate a few people on a part-time basis, while publicising it and getting loads of news coverage for the brand. The last project which actually went ahead to produce a new plane, and set up properly to finish it, was Cirrus and Diamond. If you are really trying to develop a new plane, you will (or should!) get somebody who has done it before and knows which boxes to tick for the FAA (or EASA). I don’t think the Panthera ever got to that stage.
All publishing is desperate for material. The mags (printed and online) are constantly scraping the barrel for anything to put out. The internet, coupled with many people “living for today”, has diluted attention. Look how much coverage companies like Airbus an Siemens got with their electric planes. IMHO these are worthless projects in terms of producing the product in question (an electric GA plane has massive issues to solve to be anywhere near usable) but it is perfectly legitimate to spend say €1M a year developing something which will never “fly” if it gets you €1M’s worth of news coverage AND makes your company look like it is on the leading edge of not just technology but being ultra-fashionable “green” The former you could buy but the latter you cannot.
One way an engine like this will become viable is for the owners to get the STC and then go bust, and somebody acquiring the company for a low amount and then producing and selling the engine not having to recover the development and certification cost.
I don’t think that happens often enough, because the original (pi$$ed off) investors try to hang on.
I have seen this in another context; you have a “serial enterpreneur” (usually a charismatic guy who spins a great yarn) and the name of the game is to keep a steady stream of new investors while you burn their cash. Each new investor dilutes the % quity of the existing ones who gradually lose interest (because nothing short of a sale to [your favourite massive company name] will give him any return) but that’s fine as long as you keep new ones coming in. This is not a formula where people will be happy to just drop it.
Cobalt wrote:
The entire world of certification is completely broken.
No it isn’t. Certification in itself isn’t the main cost component in a development, by far. If you consider certification from the beginning of the development, you have very little actual overhead. Because the engineering that leads to a certified product has to be done anyway. Of course, if you tinker some aircraft in your backyard, skip most important testing and calculations, you end up with doing much of the work for “certification” twice. Then you moan about “broken certification” and don’t get that you should have engineered the aircraft right from the beginning. Then your construction errors would be much cheaper.
denopa wrote:
If you’re a certification officer, unless there is a very specific culture of promoting innovation, you have zero upside in encouraging things, against a severe career risk if you approve something that’s put into question with hindsight later on.
Yet, this is not what we see from certification officers.
mh wrote:
No it isn’t. Certification in itself isn’t the main cost component in a development, by far. If you consider certification from the beginning of the development, you have very little actual overhead.
Then why is (for example) Garmin charging much, much more for a certified version of the same device? They should know how to do certification right as they are one of the few companies who has been given the right to self-certify by the FAA.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Then why is (for example) Garmin charging much, much more for a certified version of the same device?
Because they can. And because pilots repeat the tale of overly expensive certification costs, mostly without even the slightest insight at all.
