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Piper piston PA46 Malibu / Mirage and other pressurised SEPs (and some piston versus PT6 discussion)

Malibuflyer wrote:

In all of these variants engine failures are extremely rare events. So there is no significant difference in reliability. You are much more likely to kill yourself due to improper flight planning, not watching out or just messing up in a different way…

+1

I do not have the actual number, but in the typical IMC, long-distance, cross country flying these aircraft live, and if we eliminate engine failures due to improper fuel panning/management, I am pretty certain engine failure is less than 10% your overall accident risk.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Malibuflyer wrote:

Max Cabin pressure Dif is 5.5 psi for the Malibu vs. 3.35 for the P210. That is 6.000ft vs. 11.000ft cabin altitude at FL220. Actually the P210 is cabin altitude limited if you don’t carry an extra bottle of oxygen with you.

That is correct: I do not have an official source but I have read in several places that the FL230 ceiling limitation on the P210N stemmed out of pressurization performance rather than aircraft performance. On an ISA day the airplane will keep climbing happily above that. At the ceiling, cabin pressure altitude will be 12500ft which does not require O2 under FAA Part 91.211a, but under Part NCO.OP.190 the crew need supplemental O2 after 30mins in those conditions.
In practice, this does not have a big impact on capability, since both types live happier between FL150-200 which is a cabin of FL060-100 on the P210 (FL020-FL050 on the PA46) . It has an impact on comfort. We only tend to fly higher than FL200 for short periods to clear weather or take advantage of a significantly higher tailwind.

On the P210 with TSIO-520 engine at ISA++ the typical incentive to stay at or under FL200 is bootstrapping in LOP ops and CHT.

So yes, I would say the biggest practical operational differences between P210 and PA46 are pressurization and load carrying.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

@cobalt may recall the survey I mentioned.

Sure, these were not “crashes” or forced landings. From the typical high altitude mission profile, and given most PA46 traffic is in the US, most make it to an airport, and then this doesn’t feature in any reported stats.

Same with any Lyco/Conti reliability discussion, actually…

From talking to a huge number of pilots over 20 years, I am certain that by far the biggest factor in whether something gets reported is whether

  • the thing is still within warranty, and/or
  • the thing is going to be put up for sale soon

If Yes to either, then the owner has a reason to keep quiet, and most people go to great lengths to keep it off the forums etc. A number of times I posted about something here, in general terms, but when pressed for detail, the source would not authorise any detail due to e.g. his dealer relationship so I got accused of making it up

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Malibuflyer wrote:

In all of these variants engine failures are extremely rare events. So there is no significant difference in reliability. You are much more likely to kill yourself due to improper flight planning, not watching out or just messing up in a different way…

Agree… and when engine failures do happen, problems can many times be traced back to lacking or faulty maintenance. In fact many other critical failures are more likely than the engine itself. One good thing about the PA46 is its likely to be up high and with good glide ratio some options should exist in rare case of engine failure.

Things to be of main concern in an IFR environment (of which PA46s are more likely to operate than many other SEP GA airplanes) should be things like thunderstorms, icing, remembering to turn on pitot heat, beeing able to handfly IMC in case of autopilot failure, knowing how to fly approach correctly, maintain airspeed to avoid stall/spin, knowing how to land the plane in windy conditions (stick/rudder skills) ect. All easier said than done for sure, but that is the stuff that really fill the statistics. And from what I can read, lots of fatal accidents with PA46s came from pilots getting in too deep. Single pilot IFR in a light aircraft is no joke. At one point the fatal accident rate was so high NTSB started a review process suspecting a design error was in the PA46 leading to inflight breakup. More or less the conclusion was that more pilot training was needed. Im sure all PA46 owners know this and probably to much better detail.

Last Edited by THY at 28 Sep 11:24
THY
EKRK, Denmark

It should be in the incident reports, but unfortunately and understandably (tongue not in cheek ready to be pulled on this), not all of them are reported.

The bulk of the PA46 operations are under some kind of ATC control/monitoring. An engine failure in cruise, call me old fashioned, is a MAYDAY event which when transmitted will result in an MOR and an event/incident recording.

I expect the pilot will be more concerned on getting ATC help and mobilising emergency services than protecting the type’s reputation:)

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

More or less the conclusion was that more pilot training was needed.

Yes. In effect the PA46 was recertified, with a very demanding load testing etc. The main issues the FAA identified were stalling with autopilot on (in vertical speed mode) and lack of respect for the icing conditions checklist (pitot heat of course, but also alternate air and the rest), often in combination.

Other early issues were related to the Conti POH LOP operations, which were a lot less understood back then, and for which proper engine instrumentation was missing.

Peter has a point on people having a tendency to not report and protect the type, a culture of transparency and safety needs to be encouraged. I believe MMOPA has that, trying to follow in COPA’s footsteps in educating pilots. It’s not perfect (a long time PA46 instructor with two recent fatalities in his training roster may get a lot of support on the forums while people who don’t contribute similarly can be judged harshly in case of accidents even before the report is out) and you can get told off for criticising the manufacturer (as I’ve been for calling them on the inadequate fuel senders, now fixed), but it’s still quite healthy.

Last Edited by denopa at 28 Sep 12:57
EGTF, LFTF

@denopa switch to Cies fuel senders, you won’t be looking back.

T28
Switzerland

I have actually, as I didn’t trust Piper’s third iteration, but the people who have are quite happy (and Cies are more expensive and more complex to install)

EGTF, LFTF

I actually wasn’t thinking of people trying to protect the type, although I guess that must take place (everybody loves their plane, etc )

What I had in mind was just people protecting their investment (for re-sale) and their dealer relationship (because they are normally trying to twist the dealer’s arm to honour the warranty on something, implement an MSB, etc). For example, traditionally SBs are not warranty covered but MSB are, so manufacturers keep MSBs to a minimum during the active production period

Then you get a lot of people holding the view that “new tech” needs to be given a chance. Most people prefer to let others do that particular research but some people do actually buy the latest whizzo product, and evangelise it all over the internet. Occassionally, to their great credit, some do finally post what a POS it was (after they sold it) and how glad they were to see the back of it, but this remains rare.

Then, Lyco/Conti engines are repaired/overhauled all over the place, quietly, with the mfg knowing practically nothing about it beyond seeing that Shop X has just ordered 6 pistons 6 conrods 1 crankshaft etc. One PA46 owner I knew said that chucking away cylinders was just completely normal… however he was flying the same constant mission profile which was a fast climb to FL250, 1-2hrs, and then a fast descent. And I am sure he didn’t know about LOP etc.

It all makes quality research difficult. There is a natural slant to problems in “old kit” being reported a lot more than problems in “new kit”.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Antonio wrote:

It depends what you consider a “failure”.

Anytime an engine looses partial or all power in flight. Most of the time it would mean a deadstick landing.

Clearly, some of them will be due to external factors, e.g running out of fuel, but those which have the reason firewall forward would qualify, regardless if it is enough to tighten a screw to remedy the situation, figuratively speaking.

I reckon that so many Malibu engine failures resulting in deadstick forced landings are not reported has to do with the fact that they fly much higher than everyone else and therefore their chance of reaching a piece of concrete with a maintenance shop attached (as in airport) is much higher than for the usual piston fleet.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
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