SET Commercial ops

Helpfully, there is no URL but hard core Cologne “residents” will know where to find it …

… that was the easy bit: https://easa.europa.eu/system/files/dfu/CRD%20to%20NPA%202014-18.pdf

But reading those 112 pages? Certainly not me. Anyway, I will rather quit flying than to fly commercially with a single in all-weather operations. Want to meet my grandchildren one day…

w_n I for one thought the relaxation of AOC operations in France to include SET for night and IFR was commercially friendly, and I believe they must have looked at the safety case. Thanks for posting the link, and will check it out.

The PC-12 is used extensively in commercial operations where permitted with a good safety record. If the alternate is a legacy piston twin I would have thought a flat rated, pressurised, single turbine with TAWS, TCAS, Weather Radar, FIKI, and a Honeywell avionics suite might be reasonably compelling.

The twin turbine alternative is Class B and am not sure presents a compelling better safety case, using dry statistics.

RobertL18C wrote:

The twin turbine alternative is Class B and am not sure presents a compelling better safety case, using dry statistics.

Yes, I know the figures and believe them. But after many years on the job I think that my current light-jet operation is about the lowest level of work one should accept as a professional pilot. Pay is just enough enough to survive (especially for the new first officers), rosters don’t exist and passengers keep complaining about the lack of comfort. Smaller and cheaper aircraft (i.e. turbine singles) mean that everything goes down one step further. Even less pay (why should anyone pay the pilot of an aeroplane that costs 1000 Euros per hour the same amount they pay for a 3500 Euro/hour plane?), even more passengers complaining and on top of that certain death if the engine should quit. This is not what “we” (and I think I am not speaking for myself alone) had in mind when we quit a good profession/job to live our dream as pilot…

Here is the link to the actual NPA, it is not the .pdf itself, but gives you the link to the proposed amendment under consideration.

https://easa.europa.eu/document-library/notices-of-proposed-amendment/npa-2014-18 [ local copy ]

There is useful topics for EuroGA, including minimum RVR, route risk assessment, recurring training in full flight simulators, experience requirements, etc

The safety case compares it to twin turboprops where both SET and MET are statistically similar at 4/million hours fatal rate (3.96 for MET, and 4.44 for SET)

w_n, that was my angle, comparing them to Class B twin turboprops, not multi turbo fan. This safety case threshold is about five to ten times better than the GA piston world of one to two/100,000 hours, closer to 2 for IMC. Although for our Cirri brethren, the trend on this type continues to improve, and that is due to operators finally pulling the blessed chute when required.

I have just read in a UK trade rag that SET public transport ops will be authorised in early 2017, with around six operators having late-stage approvals.

The article cites some inland routes e.g. Oxford to Cambridge. This is interesting because I always though the “shagged piston” Islander/Trilander ops which run the Southampton (etc) to the Channel Islands routes are viable only because they can scud run over the sea the entire distance, if necessary due to bad wx. And they have been known to do so, down to, ahem, 400ft Inland, this is obviously impossible and you need a proper IFR aircraft which, on the longer routes at least, can climb above the wx and that needs pressurisation.

Bathman wrote:

And I would like to think that it will help those struggling Reginal airports that shift less than a million passengers.

I don’t believe that for a moment. SET commercial operations will only take away passengers from the former light twin operators, that’s all. Trip cost is more or less the same and the selling point will be a more modern and comfortable ride. For the airport it makes no difference if he handles four passengers who climb into a TBM or a Seneca.

Freight does care. You can’t have freight dropping to -56 degC or anywhere near there. Also the pilot(s) is not going to wear a mask.

Also unpressurised passenger transport is a no-go in N European (especially UK) wx if you want to run a regular service. Above 8000ft you will have all sorts of issues, with less than healthy passengers who are quite common these days. But 8000ft will place you bang in the middle of the worst turbulence and icing, almost any time of the year. With a TBM or a PC12 you can climb straight up to FL250+ and you have de-icing and radar.

A lot of mid-level PT ops used to happen in the old unpressurised days but the safety record was atrocious because they spent a lot of time collecting inches of ice or getting sucked up into a CB, or both. Fate is the Hunter is a good read

What this won’t help with are more basic issues like running a service from say Shoreham to “Paris” when Gatwick is just up the road, with cheap flights to “real Paris” (not Pontoise) and the French customs promise to provide Customs at Pontoise and a year later it doesn’t happen so you have to do a T&G at LFAT

It should work well on carefully picked high value routes.

Also the Aurigny flights to the Channel Islands are no doubt carefully looking at SETs. Their pistons are really shagged and will be scrapped eventually and a PC12 is bound to cost a lot less than a MET. And their customers are totally over a barrel living in a god forsaken place like Alderney and are willing to pay heavily to get out of there regularly. But this is just making W_N’s point above i.e. no new business.

W-N will know more because he used to run this, but the examples I saw were e.g. a shagged Seneca with unknown fuel levels, usually below the level which could be visually inspected, in case 4-5 large individuals with gold bags turned up, which was run by a school for self fly hire and they had a charter AOC which probably cost them 5-10k a year in CAA fees. The self fly hire business (which due to the hourly rate comprised mainly of low-currency renters) supplemented the running costs. And no doubt the AOC enabled avgas duty reclaim Nowadays, the piston twin self fly hire business is close to dead (because the MEP scene is small, with just a small number of owners who have hung in there, plus a slowly growing DA42 owning group) and while many DA42s are used by FTOs for ATPL training, few are available for hire (due to a lack of suitable customers) plus the DA42 is hardly suitable for charter, due to payload.