Bravo and cia,
Fair points raised about redundancy and "feeling" of security a twin has on pax and many pilots. However, twin are being given too much credit, and apparently jaa and the like are looking into the 2 engines solution the answer to all accidents...... WRONG!!!
Somebody said in previous posts that having another engine gave him a security feeling....
. That is what worries me, because we might be lulled into a false feeling of security wich invariably leads to the REAL main cause of accidents, i.e. pilot error. I am not implying that a good pilot is one that doesnt make errors, thatīs is uthopic at best. We are all prone to errors and sooner or later we will make them. It all depends on timing, situational awareness, how far from the safe envelope we are when that happens, etc, etc. And of course, how lucky we are!
For instance, an example I know well. Traffic police in Spain were using single turbine EC-120 and sometimes single Ecureil (b3 and the like). Well, no accidents and no close calls in a fair amount of years. Then JAR came into the picture and the goverment decided that everything had to be twin-engine (scary when politicians decided what is best for us....), so they upgraded to the twin EC-135. Not a single pilot from the company is happy about it, rather far from beeing happy, i should say. The margin they had on the single has become lessened now, and still they do the same kind of flights. Scary, very very scary. And the private operators, that is even worse. Because they have paid for a twin helicopter, ir training maybe and mcc, they assume they can do the same jobs as before, and even they reckon the limits should be puss even further than in the past. So you are left with less power, doing the same jobs than before, even worse. All of us know how close to the accident-limit line we get more often than not. Now, because you have two engines, you should be able to push the limits and make the deadlines still, but with less power available......... Very, very scary.
So, yes I agree twins (at least some) might be safer and more redundant on the engineering side and in theory, BUT, the understanding that JAA and every stateīs civil aviation authorities are getting, it is going to cause more accidents than prevent them, in my opinion. Aside the fact that is making new pilots really hard to make it, but that is another kind of subject.
My 0.5 pence worth
Safe flying every1