PT6s are very reliable but they do stop sometimes.
I wonder what options there are for engine mismanagement?
I wonder what options there are for engine mismanagement?
Really very few – the Meridian has the simplest engine management of any turboprop. It has a single Power Control Lever. The Meridian doesn’t even had a condition lever in the normal sense (adjust propeller speed). It is a binary fuel on/2000RPM or fuel off/feather. It has a detent so you can’t just accidentaly pull it back.
You could forget to use the friction nut and get a power rollback without noticing and get slow I suppose.
Essentially if you can start a PT6 and keep feeding it with fuel they just do not tend to stop.
A prop failure of some kind will have same result as engine failure.
The pictures I saw in the Swedish rag didn’t suggest this was a turbine. Looked like a piston to me.
Funnily enough, this pilot and I were neighbors in the early 90’s in Stockholm. He’s mainly a helicopter pilot and has been flying those professionally for 20 years and still does. He had an accident with a Bell 205 (Huey) where he set down on a pier in the archipelago and the helicopter tipped backwards into the water and sank. Everyone got out except the front passenger woman who drowned. She happened to be his girlfriend, too. Was a long investigation about it, but ultimately he was cleared.
Out of the 10 accidents/incidents in PA46s since the start of the year (a huge number, compared to the size of the fleet and past years experience), 6 are turbines. This one is the first where the engine is involved AFAIK, and it’s a turbine.
It’s true the PA46 piston works hard; but in the past 5 years there’s been as many engine problems with the turbine as with the piston. Counterintuitive maybe, but that’s why it’s worth mentioning.
I’ve had my troubles with my engine, and I’ve posted openly about them on this forum. In the end it was caused by sand in the fuel system. That would have created issues in any installation. At least in the PA46 you tend to be high and thanks to the fantastic glide ratio the wing provides, you have lots of options.
It took me a couple of months to feel confident again, but now I don’t think twice about crossing water or high terrain with my family on board. I take the usual precautions.
More pictures from the crash http://vlt.se/nyheter/vasteras/1.2839799-bildextra-se-bilderna-fran-flygolyckan
You can see that it’s a turbine aircraft:
When I was in Uganda last year, I talked to a turbine engine maintenance specialist working in Africa for more than 20 years for MAF Aviation in basically all the countries there where they operate amongst other aircraft loads of caravans. He told me that he would consider a piston engine more reliable than a turbine. That was the first time I heard this as my believe so far was that the engine failure ratio for the PT6 engine was very, very low. The guy told me that by far not all the accidents (in Africa) with the engine was taken along in the statistics for the engine.
Even so, the engine attracts me as well as the aircraft as it seems the logical step up from a Cirrus.
Sjoerd,
This could very well be a classic case of confirmation bias: the man is a turbine maintenance specialist, hence he sees a lot more turbine than pistons issues, and deducts from his experience that this holds true for the whole GA world.
As for going from a Cirrus to a PA46, there are a lot of people on the MMOPA forums who have done that, and the only complain they voice is not having moved sooner. It’s a great aircraft. It deserves respect and is well suited to people who enjoy reading their POH in their spare time 
Patrick
Patrick: I am still missing good W&B numbers and endurance/range for the Meridian. I am a member of MMIG46 and was for a while also a member of MMOPA. I have heard rumours that Piper is bringing out a new Meridian with G1000/perspective and a stronger airframe (wings part). But that is not the discussion here, isn’t it.
