I have to say Neil, I am rapidly coming to agree with you. I am not sure SE or ME turboprops or even SE high performance pistons are a good idea to fly without actual TR type training. Not an EASA TR but a proper, flying-focused TR a la Flightsafety or similar.
Actually I would say a PISTON MEP ist the one type where you need the most proficiency to stay safe, especially whe it’s about engine failures after t.o. … and flying single pilot in serious IMC too. I let my MEP rating run out after ten years, because it was very clear I would never be really safe when I only flew a couple of hours every year. I would even be safer in a TBM or Meridian, I am sure. I flew a lot of Seneca V, and have some hours in Jetprops, TBMs and PC-12. The Seneca could scare me the most and I never reached the level where I would have flown it in IMC.
Actually I would say a PISTON MEP ist the one type where you need the most proficiency to stay safe, especially whe it’s about engine failures after t.o
Yes, but I don’t think it is about EFATO. It is about the pilot and their flying skill under pressure in IMC with a high workload in a high performance aircraft.
This is where the debate moves to how much can “we” be trusted to realise “we” are out of our depth and need more training, more currency, or should simply give up.
It happens at every level of aviation.
To some people it might happen flying a C150, when they realise they cannot deal with anything beyond a sunny day to Bembridge. To others it might happen flying a Seneca in IMC. Most people with the original IQ to get the PPL are smart enough to realise when they have reached that point, and do something about it (or give up). A few (very few) don’t and they get killed.
But to have a type specific course for everything will kill PPL training, because the already not great number of students would be thinned out so much that nobody would bother catering for the various market sectors. It’s a bit like it is already very hard to find an ATO which will train the CB IR at all, let alone in your own plane.
Also one cannot regulate for every possible sort of human stupidity or attitude to risk. It is really good that the national CAAs are not staffed with pilots!
Almost nobody is doing the MEP now (as compared with when I started in 2000 when it was the normal “next step”) because you need the annual revalidation, and operating a twin costs so much more. There are sure advantages to them but the market has spoken… consequently almost every twin in the training scene (apart from the DA42s) is a shagged old heap which looks like something out of WW2 and is not exactly enticing to customers. And the self fly hire business is almost dead, though it was almost dead many years ago, with just a few low currency pilots in it (google G-OMAR). People used to do the MEP (5 hours at say £200/hr back then) just to tick the box and then they chucked it away. One ATO near where I am has stopped renting out its DA42 because customers kept breaking bits on it and it cost too much to keep repairing it.
My view is that once you have the brain to realise that 150kt is not the same as 100kt, and needs planning ahead a higher performance aircraft is easier to fly – because so many safety issues we have to deal with are actually due to low performance. Especially poor climb rates, which together with lack of anti-ice expose one to the biggest hazards of all: the weather.
A more market oriented approach would rely on the insurance industry to establish what is reasonable training and what is required to become a risk worth undersigning. Third party liability insurance is mandatory. In the US that appears to work very well, in Europe the insurance companies don’t have that level of sophistication.
I think European insurers are trying to make money out of a very competitive market and struggle to assess the risks.
But also the risks are mostly not simply due to people flying high perf aircraft and getting behind it. The fatal accidents one reads about most are much more basic and to do with very low currency and a lack of appreciation of weather. I think the biggest “European disease” is just not flying much.
I would argue that the US insurers’ strive for money and the competitiveness there is even bigger than here. Under that logic they should be more lenient but they are not. They go into great detail and apply very aircraft and pilot specific requirements.
I owned a C172 which I got insured at a very good price freshly after getting my PPL. Then I upgraded to a TR182 which is pretty high end in terms of SEP complexity and the insurance company said “it’s a Cessna 182, you have some hours in 172, they are similar, so this is not a problem, just make sure you do at least one flight with a CFI before you start flying on your own”.
It tells me that for some reason, there is very little knowledge about aircraft, pilots and the associated risks among insurance companies in Europe. Or this whole US system is entirely unnecessary and it’s just a cartel to drive up prices by agreeing on unreasonable requirements? I always wondered why it is much cheaper to insure a GA aircraft in Europe than in the US when even EASA admit that our accident rate is higher.
I always wondered why it is much cheaper to insure a GA aircraft in Europe than in the US
Different liability risks?
In the USA, where a type rating is only required when an aircraft has a MTOW of over 12,500 lbs or turbo jet engines, we don’t see a statistically significant increase in accident rates in Multi Engine turbo prop aircraft, over what we have in Europe (the exception to that was with the Mitsibishi MU2 – but that’s a whole different story).
Also, to suggest that ALL ME turbo prop aircraft are inherently difficult to fly, is a nonsense. Like all other ‘classes’ of aircraft, some are and some are not. Something like a (ME turbo prop) Twin Otter, is a piece of cake to fly (handles like a massive Cessna 206) yet it needs a type rating if EASA registered. A Piper Aerostar on the other hand (which can legally be flown by anyone with a MEP class rating) can be a proper handful and will deal a Darwinian punishment to anyone who either doesn’t understand it or isn’t competent enough to fly one.
All the kit manufacturers offer transition training. Not because they have to, but because of demand. According to the NTSB this is a good practice because in experimental aviation most accidents happen because people are unfamiliar with the aircraft, the systems, the handling and performance. They are not that different from certified aircraft, but odd enough to make a significant difference in accident rates. In the US it’s also an insurance thing I think.
Certification assures a degree of standardization. Aircraft in certain categories are supposed to handle and feel similar. This is not a good thing IMO, it is counter productive to technological advances.
