I fly over water in Greece,Cyprus and to Italy…I have flown a twin exactly for vthe redundancy over water,especially when 10 years ago I had my 3 young children on board…who do you save first in a ditching?
I know we have done this discussion before but it would be interesting to get some numbers on a piston twin, versus a Jetprop.
The operating costs of a Jetprop are very likely lower than those of any avgas burning piston twin.
And the Jetprop doesn’t have, or is no worse in, the things which will bring down a twin
I doubt the numbers exist because most single engine failures on twins are not reportable. But superficially I don’t think twins are safer than SETs.
The point about that list is that you can control fuel content and mismanagement, so, if you are safety conscious, you can eliminate them.
The others result in single engine failure. The fuel icing on the Aztec was always (time after time after time) on the right engine. Eventually I always used 1% IPA and the problem went away.
However, given the unknown cause, you presumably never knew how close the other engine was to failing also. I met a pilot who had a pressurised Baron and got a double failure over the N Sea, gliding from FL250 to 2000ft when both restarted. Fair enough; he probably should have used IPA too…
I suppose, the Q is: what can bring down a twin that the pilot has no control over. The probability of both engines failing for independent reasons must be extremely low.
Unless the surviving engine is mismanaged as a result of the OEI situation, as reportedly happened in that famous Australian big-twin one; Deakin wrote on it. But then even that mismanagement is under pilot control…
I’d prefer either a DA62 or a SET (FL200+ and running Xavion should get you to a threshold).
I spoke to the owner of a very nice jetprop lately and he said the TBO is 4000 hours and all you do is add fuel and oil.
But, I have no experience on avgas twins so take it with a grain of salt.
Many turbines are cheaper if one conveniently ignores purchase price. But that’s where crux of the matter lays. Hard to do on $1 Million + purchase. You can fly a lot of years and repair a lot of twins for that kind of money.
But since we opened that door again, you can fly a MU-2, Merlin, Turbo Commander or Cessna Conquest (or any other TPE331 engined plane) for much less than most, if not all, PT6 singles. Yet, no one does it or actually bothers to run the numbers, because everyone’s obsessed with SETP. It’s a fixation.
Yes that is very true; you will never get a “properly functioning” TP cheaply. I was intenting to just take the case of reliability.
Snoopy wrote:
(FL200+ and running Xavion should get you to a threshold).
Well, how far can a jetprop glide from FL200? For the Channel maybe enough, for routes like PMI-France I’d be surprised.
I had exactly the same experience as Timothy flying an Aztec OEI. I flew out of Dublin one evening and climbing out over the Irish Sea noticed the oil pressure dropping on the left engine. Had to shut it down and then flew back to my base which is just south of Birmingham on one engine at 5000ft. It was totally a non event and after trimming the rudder the only difference was a speed reduction. In a single I would have been swimming.
