A few days ago was the 50th anniversary of the crash of Delta 723 at Logan airport in Boston. An interesting article on the orphans of the plane crash victims:
Fifty Years Later, the Orphans of Flight 723 Return to the Scene: A Vermont woman spent years tracking down men and women who lost their parents in the same 1973 plane crash. Would they answer her questions about loss?
There have been a number of accidents that have occurred in such poor vis that the airport has no idea the accident happened. Plus of course the occasional accident that occurs on a corner of the airport hidden from the control tower by intervening obstructions. Even when they know or persuade themselves an accident has occurred, often it takes fire/rescue a rather long time to feel their way into the murk before stumbling on the scene of the crash.
Here’s one I happen to know of off top of head:
@Elendil_s_Heir: That Luftwaffe mishap reminds me of this one
Everybody stayed in formation and died as a group after Lead made a mistake.
Perhaps most famously in the Tenerife disaster - emergency services were tending to the stricken PanAm jet for some minutes before anyone realised the KLM jumbo was on fire further down the runway. ATC couldn’t see much through the fog.
Yes. Who at that small airport would expect two burning jets?
I did not read the wiki in detail on AA1420 before I posted it. I see now the article doesn’t mention it, but the rainfall rate was so severe the firetrucks could not find the accident; visibility was negligible. The rain eased up somewhat a few minutes later and then they located the wreckage.
Very nice airplane, indeed. But it reminded me of something you said once basically along the lines of, if you put a turboprop into an airplane, it becomes a completely different plane compared to a similar piston-engine plane. And you ain’t just whistlin’ dixie, brother! I looked up the approximate cost of a TBM 900. On the used market, a pre-owned TBM 900 averages around $3.25 million; some are going for as much as $4.8 million. Used.
It’s kinda funny in a way because at a casual glance, they look like low-wing single-engine private planes in the same class as a humble Piper Cherokee, although one soon sees that it’s significantly larger and has a distinctly longer nose. So what do you get for all those millions? You get turboprop power, fast cruise, high service ceiling, and impressive range for a small plane – more than 2,000 miles. The pressurized cabin is small but comfortable enough for up to four people. This is really in competition with small private jets.
Sorry, I’m just talking to myself here. It’s a really impressive little plane, but hot damn – the cost! If someone wants to talk about an actual large private jet like the Gulfstream G650, you gotta dig a little deeper into your lunch money – $65 million new (but used ones can be had for as little as the bargain-basement price of $40 million). Christ on a pogo stick, I would have thought new airliners could be bought for that, as indeed they once could be, and not that long ago, either!
How many examples are there of planes that had both piston and turboprop options? The only one I can think of is the de Havilland Beaver. I saw a Turbo Beaver once, getting some modifications and an up-rated version of the PT6 engine.
Very few indeed, but I don’t think that was really the point.
The Piper PA-46 Malibu was piston-engined, and then retrofitted with a turboprop and renamed the Meridian and later M500. The TBM series itself was derived from the Mooney 301 that was powered by a Lycoming 6-cylinder piston engine.
In any case, I don’t think the observation was meant to be taken literally, as in, remove this piston engine and drop in a turboprop. I think it rather means that aircraft equipped with turboprops are going to be designed for high speeds, high altitudes, pressurized cabins, and obviously retractable landing gears, and all the appropriate controls and avionics, putting them in a completely different class from your run-of-the-mill small single-engine piston-powered planes even if at a casual glance they somewhat look the same.
From a different thread: the Cessna 210 Centurion (coming in many piston variants), but also a conversion called the “Silver Eagle” with a Rolls-Royce Model 250 turboprop.
Oh, I know but it got me thinking of how many cases there might be where you could compare piston and turboprop in the same airframe.
There have probably been plenty of aftermarket mods, and experimental conversions of piston to turboprop, but how many full factory-supported examples have there been?
It started life as a piston twin. I flew those in Grand Canyon air tours. Then they made a pressurized variant. Then they made a turboprop variant of the pressurized variant:
Then they went even farther and it became the:
A friend of my Dad had one; that was a sweet ride. As long as somebody richer than college-aged me was buying the gas.
In a much earlier era there was also the
series. As the article outlines, it started as a piston & ended as a turboprop.
A near contemporary to the Aero Commander was Beech’s original big twin, the piston
Which later was fitted with turbprops and became the
which eventually was morphed into the
which was in turn grown & tweaked a lot and turned into the abomination known as the
The big thing all of these airplanes had going on, but especially the Aero Commander & the Queen Air, is that reliable powerful non-radial pistons in big horsepower simply didn’t exist. So they all started out as grossly underpowered ugly duckling disasters that suddenly turned into beautiful swans once they had 600-750shp per side to drag them through the sky. Now with enough power you could grow the passenger capacity and fuel capacity enough it made sense.
The Navajo/Cheyenne benefited from being invented 10-15 year later than the others. By which time the TSIO-540 had been perfected. It still was no TPE331 or PT-6, but it put out 350HP, was reliable, and had a small & therefore low-drag frontal cross-section.
In the wacky world of trying to sell USAF stuff they ought to want, but don’t, there’s this entrant which sort of straddles the line between aftermarket conversion vs factory new:
It started life as the North American P-51 Mustang. Really. They were going to build brand new P-51 variants on mostly original WWII tooling except for the parts that were all new.
I was in the right time and place and job that if USAF had bought any for real I’d have been flying them. Gawd I wish. But it was not to be. Sigh.
There was a proposal to build new Grumman Geese with turboprop engines, but it fell through. Another company has acquired the type certificate for the Grumman Albatross with plans to produce a new turboprop version in 2024.
The world’s first liquid hydrogen-powered four-seater, a product involving the Slovenian aircraft maker Pipistrel, made its maiden flight at Maribor airport on 7 September in what is considered a major milestone in zero-emission aviation.
The H2FLY HY4 aircraft has been developed by the German company H2FLY in cooperation with Ajdovščina-based Pipistrel and the French industrial gas supplier Air Liquide.
Exactly. The fuel cell converts hydrogen directly into electricity and the electricity turns the motor that turns the prop. There might be a small buffering battery in there to improve throttle response or takeoff performance, but the only true source of energy is the fuel cell consuming the hydrogen.
No part of that is revolutionary. But like with battery tech, the problem is getting size, weight, heat rejection, and operating efficiency all high enough to be compatible with a flying machine. These folks are evidently getting close to cracking that nut.