That doesn’t sound quite right. There are lots of piston engined twins that won’t maintain height very well with an engine out but there’s no reason why any should cause a crash provided airspeed is adequate.
Generally, it’s about aviation…
China opens world’s highest civilian airport
Let’s hope it stays cold up there!
Whee! Had my first proper flight lesson tonight, and it was a blast. I’d been up in the left seat before, on an “introductory flight”, but I was nervous as hell that time, and it was a bit bumpy–lots of little thermals off roads and the like. This time it was about an hour before sunset, the air was smooth, and I just had a good time getting to feel how the plane responded, learning to actually listen to my body and look out of the cockpit rather than staring at the instrument panel*, and just generally toodling around about a mile above the ground. 
Hazy night, but otherwise beautiful; there was a lovely moment when we turned east and flew right into the moon, low and big on the horizon. I think I’m going to enjoy this. Had a nice crosswind landing courtesy of the CFI and taxiied her back home (in which I realized that she didn’t have power steering, heh). I do think I’m hooked–trying to figure out when I’ll be able to get up again.
- Once upon a time, I was trying to learn some horseback riding, something I’d still like to do. For whatever reason, I had a powerful urge to focus on my horse’s ears–my instructor kept telling me to stop looking at his pretty ears and watch where I was going! Seems to be a theme for me. Here, it helped once I realized that the instruments lag–I’d feel the plane bank a good few seconds before it showed on the panel. Better to watch the horizon and listen to my body to know when she’s drifting. She, by the way, was a CTLS–I’m going for the sport pilot certificate for now, as a third class medical certificate would be a bit of a hassle.
The Cessna 411 had a bad reputation on one engine.
A full load, right after takeoff with no where to go could get really fast. If that was what the test pilot was doing, crashing every time, they would run out of test pilots in a hurry.
The C-=411’s problem had more to do with lack of low speed rudder control than just low power.
The old 150HP Piper Apache just gave a slightly longer glide to an emergency landing with just one engine. On a hot damp day at much of anything above sea level was a bit of a challenge for them is loaded heavy.
I have flown, IIRC, all the 300 series Cessna’s & most of the 400 series. High & hot, almost all piston twins do not do all that well but on a standard day, all of them will be able to do the published numbers.
The old damaged & bent slightly aircraft, loaded to legal capacity, with marginal engines or unskilled low time pilots is completely different.
Any idea of which 300 series of Cessna could not fly at all with one engine even with a good test pilot?
I would like that opinion to be a little more specific. Do you remember what the plane looked like? Type of tail, year made, look of the engine covers, where the door or doors were?
The Cessna AT-50, Bamboo Bomber, the original Sky King aircraft was a bit marginal on one engine. But it had one of the strongest main spars of that era. It could have a half inch of dry root on the bottom & was still considered airworthy.
In another thread, pullin posted this:
This is a great attitude & so true.
From my short time as an flight instructor. Turned out to not be my cup of tea for many reasons. :
I had been flying some very poorly maintained C-150s ( straight backs ) doing pipeline patrol for a while and not doing much instruction, ( still legal to instruct ) when a friend who had learned to fly recently from somewhere, I forget, not important anyway, came to me with a concern about his ability to fly at night.
Yepper, he was really bad.
After some discussion we felt that it was his reliance on the instruments while attempting to land. So on an average night, we go to a small airport with big old military runways which is away from a small city with few lights & just has simple runway lights.
So to show him that the C-150 did indeed talk to him, on the downwind leg, I turned off the master switch. ( ya ya, not safe, legal etc X 100, but that was the only way to show him / teach him IMO & there was no other traffic around. I told you I was not cut out to be an instructor, get over it. )
Anyway, that got his attention. I had him really listen to the plane & wind noise that was going on & he pretty much had to keep his eyes outside. Ya ya, had flashlights but for this bit I declared they were all broke, could not use.
Talked him around the pattern and to a full stop landing with just using his eyes outside & listening to what the plane was telling him with noise, feel, & his previous flight knowledge that he did not even realize he had.
We did that one more time with me being quite & he doing it all on his own, and then quit that foolishness before something bad happened.
This seemed to cure his problems with night landing & according to him, he made better day landings also.
Yes, especially small aircraft, do talk to you & let you know what they need. You just need to learn to listen.
My dad was a CFI, though he only used it for friends and the Civil Air Patrol. One time he was giving another instructor a check ride. She flew the pattern and made a nice approach. About ten feet off the runway she threw her hands up in the air and declared that she had made a smooth landing. Dad grabbed the controls instantly and completed the landing. She told him, ‘I just wanted to show you that students will always try to kill you.’
I thought it was the T-50 that couldn’t maintain altitude on one engine.
That could well be.
My Dad had a friend in Texas in the 1960’s that had one but I did not hear anything about it. Only knew one other guy who had flown one but I never thought to ask him that question.
I think that well below gross weight and in low country it could do alright but at max gross weight on a hot day in Denver, I don’t think one engine would even lengthen your glide much… :D:D
I was in a twin Comanche with 200 hp engines that lost one immediately upon rotation. It took a mile to climb 75 feet. Some of that was the pilot fussing with the propeller and generally getting control of the situation. It’s suppose to climb clean at 200 fpm on one engine which is about right.
A quick look points to the 411, not a 300. I can’t find the book I had with the story of the filmed test resulting in a 1-pointer.
For some reason, I was remembering it had the round windows of the 30x series.
Anyone remember the name of the up-and-coming Cross Over Star trying to find a cheap ride for herself, the camera crew, make-up and general entourage from the Caribbean to Miami? With all the gear for the sound and video? Every small plane they approached said “2 trips”. Finally, 1 said sure, pack it in. I saw an aerial shot of the wreck - should be in every ground school as “what happens when you fly out of Ground Effect”.
At quick glace, it looked fine - all the parts were where they were supposed to be - it was just that it had broken into a dozen pieces - inboard section of wing, center section of wing, outboard section; tail cone, tail cone to close-out bulkhead, etc.
For some reason, I thought it was one of these doomed Cessnas.
What is about flying that makes people look at a 10,000 hour Apache with 500 STOP (and that’s the GOOD one), and think “yeah, I’ll make a mint selling twin instruction”?
There was one at the airport I called home for a couple of years - I saw it driving around with everything aft of the close-out off.
Wasn’t surprised when, upon reducing power for short final, one engine just died completely. Unfortunately, there was nothing but a busy 6-laner to try for.
One woman got a prop slice through the (rear) roof of her station wagon.
Student and instructor killed.
[Emphasis added]
Aaliyah. I remember reading about the crash, thinking back to my time working at a high-end hotel, and shaking my head. I could imagine almost exactly how the conversation went, leading up to the decision to take off. Didn’t help that, according to the wiki, the PIC was making his first flight for the company that day, and that he had booze and coke in his system. And may have been a crackhead. And wasn’t even authorized by the company to fly the 402 in the first place. But jeez, when the cabbies driving you to the airport tell you that you’ve got too much shit to make it on the plane…you might want to listen to them.
When I had 54 hours total time as PIC, I bought my first airplane. A 85 HP Swift.
The only aircraft I have flown that is behind the power curve in a vertical dive. I can tell many stores of my adventures with that airplane, spins, secondary stalls, having to fly around houses way past the end of the runway due to inability to climb, and on and on.
The one I think fits here though happened on my mult-engine check ride in an old Piper Aztec.
The check pilot pulled the critical engine on takeoff just as we passed the point of being able to still make the runway. I did all the stuff I was supposed to do in their proper order and proceeded to fly runway heading. So did not say anything, nor give me the engine back so I started a return to the airport as we slowly, very slowly, crept upwards at rates that would calibrated in hours in stead of minutes 1 or 2 MPH above stall speed. A couple of hours later I had us on a short final when he gave me the engine back & told me to climb to xxxx heading yyy. Off we went.
While doing that climb he said, “I have never seen anyone do such a great job under those conditions, they always get behind the power curve and can’t recover so I have to give them the engine back.”
I said, “This was not hard, I fly an 85 Swift.”
That little plane taught me so much.
A fair few crashes and fatalities have resulted from this approach to check rides.
Yeah, not many pilots ever learn what a power off full auto rotation to the ground is really like either.
Most of the instruction I received was back in the dark ages from ex WWII pilot types, or night mail pilots, or from the best female instructor there ever was IMO…
Most accidents are mostly pilot error in general aviation.
About 10 of the plane types I have flown, (54) so far, I know what dead stick to the ground is like & have practiced it more than once. Also 8 of them were with a stopped propeller. Makes a huge difference. Have flown over 100 different aircraft of 54 different types.
This is all single engine. Multi-engine equipment you are supposed to practice loss of power.
Ever notice that in most dead stick gear up emergency landings the foam is never useful because they seem to glide way past it?
As a pilot who is working for hire, the ability to avoid all potential dangers is not a good way to remain employed. The type in & of itself is dangerous. Pipeline patrol, Ag flying, most forms of emergency flying. Pays to practice as realistically as you can & often. the big boys have sims for their really expensive toys. Not many really good C-150 sims around.
No, Micro Soft computer games, though not useless, do not make me a better working pilot.
Yeah, I’m from a bygone era. ::: grump ::::
I found this bit of news interesting:
Piper Seminole named ‘Most Popular’ in emerging Chinese market
I found it interesting for a couple of reasons. First, that China’s General Aviation market continues to do well (given various factors of its being, you know, China), while the GA in the U.S. has never really recovered from its collapse. The other thing is that Piper is still making the Seminole. Piper’s been through so many bankruptcies, I’m never really sure what they’re making and when.
And in other news, Wings of Hope expects to sell out of tickets for their raffle by the end of the month. 3,000 tickets will be sold; and the drawing will happen when they sell them, or June 30th if they don’t all sell. I bought three tickets at the end of March/beginning of April, and I bought three more yesterday. So my chances are 1 in 500. I thought I’d buy three more on my birthday next month, making my odds 1 in about 333. As I said in another thread, I always lose if the odds are 50/50; so the odds of my winning this airplane are a million to one.
In any case, it looks like I won’t be able to buy three more tickets if the recent email I received from Wings of Hope is correct that they’ll sell out before the 31st of this month.
A woman was killed by walking into a propeller. I just find this so depressing because it seems like such an easily avoidable accident. Wasn’t there another awful story a year or so ago about a woman (who had been a plane passenger) who was disfigured by a prop accident?
That was Lauren Scruggs, December 2011.
ETA: She was disfigured, and lost an eye. How lucky can one get? I always thought that people walking into live propellers got their brains shredded.
1970’s FAA safety poster: A prop on the loose can cook your goose.
I wonder if she just encountered debris.