As someone who grew up around GA aircraft, I have a different opinion as to what a ‘small plane’ is compared to someone whose experiences with light aircraft is limited to seeing them fly overhead. For a long time people called any small airplane a ‘Piper Cub’ (notwithstanding that Piper Cubs have always been rarities where I’ve lived) or a ‘Cessna’ (often mispronounced ‘Cezzna’). To them, it seems to me that they consider anything smaller than a 737 ‘small’. The idea of flying in a King Air or even a 100-series Dash-8 fills many people with the dread as they consider it ‘tiny’ and likely to crash.
When I think of a ‘small plane’ I think of a single- or multi-engine piston aircraft seating six people or fewer. Larger than that and I think ‘commuter aircraft’ or ‘corporate aircraft’. A Cessna Citation 500 crashed into a house in Arkansas yesterday. CNN reported it as a ‘small plane’. So did MSNBC. Sure, it’s a small jet. But bizjets don’t fit my idea of a ‘small plane’. (The Citation has a capacity of two pilots and eight passengers, though different configurations are available.) If it burns kerosene, I probably don’t consider it a ‘small plane’. (Helicopters are another matter entirely, and I’d consider a Caravan ‘small’ even though it runs on Jet-A and can carry 14 people because it’s single-engine.)
Seriously, though. When The News says ‘small plane’, what is the largest airplane that you think qualifies? With few exceptions I’d say a twin piston-engine Beechcraft, Piper, Cessna; e.g. Baron, Seneca, 340.
I can agree with this definition. I am not all that familiar with GA aircraft, but I’m not one who’d ever been particularly bothered by commuter turboprops.
For that matter, the only concern I’d have with GA aircraft is that sometimes (for example, JFK JR) the pilot may have an over-inflated idea of his or her own competence.
Agreed. I’m just saying that while I think that there is room for one to sometimes express legitimate concerns about the safety of GA travel, it’s not something I consider a failure or criticism of the aircraft.
I think as far as the general public goes, your first post was pretty right on – anything smaller than a 737. That would include even those 2 and 4 engine prop job communter planes that fan out from the hub airports that hold maybe 30-50 people.
I flew on an Ebraer(sp?) jet once, and I thought it was small merely because it had only one seat on one side of the aisle, and 2 seats on the other side.
Also, any plane that does not have a door between the cockpit and the cabin is small.
Read a study back in the 60’s that the biggest real reason when people were really honest with them selves, that they would not want to become pilots was the fact that there are no sign posts in the sky. The idea that they were solely responsible for knowing where they were was too much and too scary a responsibility.
They other was that they could not pull over and stop anyplace they wanted to.
I guess the dividing line for me is whether there’s an aisle between the seats in the cabin. I’ve been in commuter planes that had just two seats in each row, with an aisle in between. It was small, but it wasn’t a small plane.
As a perpetual flight student (and a pretty good pilot), I have seen plenty two seat aircraft. I think that Pilatus makes the biggest plane that I would consider a “small plane”.
Oh, yes, this is one that annoys me about media reports around here… In Spanish there’s a term for a small GA airplane, avioneta (I guess “airplanette”) and it’s like: “an avioneta out of SJU had to ditch in the lagoon…” but they mean a DC-3, which is a quite considerable flying machine.
My personal threshold? Anything smaller than a DHC Twin Otter is “small”. BUT I will confess to ocassionally telling the secretary looking through my flight-booking page at Orbitz to make sure a segment of my flights is “on a *real * airplane” :o
