Turbo prop problems

[Chimbu chuckles]

Turbine aircraft are not technically difficult to operate...easier than the old GTSIO and TSIO time bombs some of us had to cope with in times past...VASTLY easier than the old radials of the generations before...BUT they are faster, cruise higher and descend at much higher rates of descent than were possible in the pistons...without damaging the engines....and therein lay the problems for young players.

They require higher levels of airmanship and much higher understanding of good IFR basics....two areas that FAR too many relatively inexperienced pilots are short on these days.

Because turbine engines are so 'easy' and have such 'relatively' carefree handling pilots are not forced to THINK and PLAN things the way we were on C402s/404s/Queenairs/Aerostars etc. That thought and planning carried over to Turbines and coupled with , usually, much higher levels of supervision and recurrent training than appear the norm these days led to better safety results generally.

There was a time not so very long ago when you were required to have much higher experience levels to fly a Turbine...even simple ones like Twin Otters required 3000 + hrs...5000+ for Bandits and Kingairs...not because the systems were complicated but because the inherent abilities of the aircraft provided pitfalls for the unwary or unaware.

These days pilots are progressing through the ranks that much quicker. They are NOT getting the levels of on going supervision and recurrent training that was more common when virtually all high performance, cabin class piston twins and turbines were owned by 'Third Level Airlines'.

They are missing out on the basics learned by spending reasonable amounts of time at each step of the ladder....this is what we mean when we say so many pilots these days, in GA especially, but even regionals 'just don't know what they don't know'.

Hazeltons, Eastern, Sunstate, Talair, Flightwest, Oconnor, Connellan, Tillair, Air North, Ansett & East West (through their Air Ambulance contracts) etc all were operating DC3,C404s, C441s, Twin Otters, Bandits, Kingairs, C310s, Barons, C421s, Navahos, Chieftians, Queenairs etc until as recently as 15 years ago. It was a unusual to get to fly these aircraft without being employed by the above companies and ten more I can't think of off the top of my head....it was unheard of to get to fly the turbines without flying virtuall all the pistons in the above list first.

There tends to be an attitude among MANY younger pilots these days that experience is 'not required' to fly turbine equipment because "you just press a button and they start", 'computers look after this and that", "FMCs tell you all you need to know about where you are and when you will get where you are going", "they are so reliable the engines virtually never fail"

But pilots run them out of fuel despite generally very accurate gauges....pilots fly them into the ground at night, usually because they develope high RODs without it being obvious to the pilot cocooned in his quiet, pressurised hull and lacking in the IFR scan and manipulative skills to fly a circling approach into a black hole airport. Skills that WERE developed through 1000s of hours flying piston twins with often unserviceable A/Ps and that required carefull planning and engine management to avoid frightening noises from both the engines and the Chief Pilot.

Turbines generally fly at levels that are the most potentially dangerous for icing, turbulence etc...mid/high teens to highish 20s. You are covering ground that much faster, you're a long way off the ground and when things go wrong they are often commensurately more complicated.

That is why the RFDS require such high experience levels, especially IFR/night experience....not because B200s or PC12s are technically difficult aircraft to master from a systems point of view.

And that is the reason RFDS, as an example, has the impeccable safety record it has...experience (many RFDS pilots, if not most/all of the senior ones, have many 1000s of hrs on complex, high performance piston twins), supervision and recurrent training.