I guess that unless you pull with zero reason (and as long you had a valid license/aircraft was airworthy) the insurance will pay.
…where you’ll have to replace the failed engine out of pocket.
That entirely depends on your insurance. Engine insurance can be included in your hull loss cover.
My insurance has confirmed that they will pay for the complete airplane if it comes down by chute after an engine failure. But will double check …
I can’t see how this can happen unless you keep flying with only the remaining engine after the first one fails. And as I said, in practise you don’t do that more than needed to get the aircraft safely on ground.
It would be a completely different matter if you can’t abort the mission and also can’t repair or replace the failed unit – e.g. on an unmanned spacecraft.
I see what you mean, just trying (in vain) to get my head around it in terms of these functions and graphs (I mean, Murphy’s equations cannot be wrong). As always, the solution is straight forward. Each flight ending in a success (no double failures) will effectively but you back to zero. Same as in russian roulette or in a single for that matter (random occurring failures). The fundamental difference is the rate of a dual redundant system starts with zero probability of failure and increases with time instead of being a constant independent of time. Starting with zero probability is much better than starting with a constant value larger than zero.
By zooming in on the rate graph for a twin piston with a MTBF of 3500h on each engine and a SET with a MTBF of 350,000 the picture becomes clear.
Only when flying continuously 18 hours or more will the probability of double failure in a MEP be equal or higher than the probability of failure in a SET. For a two hour flight the probability (at 2 hours) is 0.00000033 or 1 failure each 3 million hours. The SET has of course 1 each 350000 always. This means a twin piston is in fact about a factor 10 or more reliable in flight than a SET, depending on the duration of the flight.
Does this look more correct Airborn?
This also answers the original question. The answer is no. Unless pilot error or eaten by moths, they will never die 
Does this look more correct Airborn?
Yes! And it is also quite interesting. Your point that the MTBF of a dual-redundancy system without repairs is only 1.5 times that of a non-redundant system got me thinking. Since flight times are very short compared to the MTBFs, I never considered that the flight time could have any practical impact on the decision between a MEP and SET, but apparently it does.
My insurance has confirmed that they will pay for the complete airplane if it comes down by chute after an engine failure. But will double check
This is country dependent, and insurer dependent, and dependent on whether you insure for “agreed value” (which may be a UK only thing).
Agreed value has the appearance of a “new for old” cover, but it gives the insurer a large incentive to repair the aircraft and give it back to you repaired, 6-12 months later perhaps. I am not sure I would like an SR22 back with avionics which saw 20G or whatever. They may well pass the bench test by a Part 145 company but no way would I want them back.
Also, a certain UK insurer jacked up the excess (the deductible, in US-speak) massively after the first UK chute pull. Basically they wanted to discourage the said syndicate from thinking about it again. I posted the details here before, to the annoyance of some people who asked for proof, which I could not give because I got it from somebody I know well who was very close to the action and who is on EuroGA but probably doesn’t want to post it himself.
That’s all theory. Most SR20/22s that came down by chute are completely ruined anyway. The 12 that were repaired later were (obviously) not repaired to g-forces that ruined them, so… why should the avionics be bad? The landing shock was probably not harder than many “normal” landings in those cases (where the plane either fell on something soft or ended hanging in a tree)
Richard, not Peter, Collins based his statistics on the higher incident of fatalities in an MEP when they have an accident, over an SEP. I believe this persists and may be a function of higher kinetic energy in an MEP, lower currency in the MEP pilot population, and SEP having less exposure to IFR operations and more exposure to training. VFR into IMC accidents for SEPs exhibit similar 70% type fatality rates so Richard Collins’ statistics may not be that relevant, and the old fatals per 100,000 hours may be more relevant. Here complex singles and MEPs have similar rates.
The PC-12 has been around long enough that some conclusions might be drawn between SET and MEP. Some of the PC-12 accidents are due to poor currency or airmanship, but even including these the fatal or serious injury accident rate does seem to be better, possibly much better, than the average MEP. Is this due to training, quality of systems, excess power of an SET, ergonomics? Probably a combination of these and not just a P&W vs Lycoming MTBF analysis.
Assuming no Ryanair my IFR tourer would be a newer, proven SEP, possibly a Turbo 182T. MEPs today, outside of some specialist roles, are strictly enthusiasts’ aircraft, just because there are very few that are less than twenty years old.
Have a friend who pulled the shoot (in the U.S.) and the plane wasn’t totaled due to gently landing on top of a snow covered mountain. Although it was taking a long time to be fixed and was becoming an issue for him with the insurance company because he was without a plane for a very long time and it wasn’t yet repaired, last I heard.
And, btw, I suppose I may be living proof the piston twin is not dead, having just bought a Baron 58, which is currently in the shop for an avionics makeover and which I’m bringing over to Europe in a few months time. I’m loving cruising along at 190 kts in my nonsensical aircraft, which seems to deal really well with inadvertent icing and be a wonderful IFR platform.
