A serviceable Mojave has a single engine ceiling of about 15,000 feet. It can maintain level flight at 7,000 feet with one engine shut down. It is a younger design than the Boeing 747 and this one has flown less hours than most of our airliners.
A Lycoming TIO540 engine can run at maximum power for 50 continious hours without exceeding limitations. This was a requirement for it's certification. (The Whylalla one did not because it was running very lean.)
This pilot DID advise ATC that he had shut down an engine. That is the same as saying the magic PAN words. He advised that he had non normal operation.
The aircraft should have made it safely back to Bankstown. The pilot's decision to do that appears to be a sound one.
The aircraft then flew at a higher speed than I would have expected (143 kts) and had a high rate of descent. We do not know why. I consider a strong tail wind is unlikely.
So there must be another factor Which we do not know yet.
Hopefully there will be more information coming fro ATSB.
Remoak
I agree with some of your comments. But our government members do not seem to use GA aircraft, and do not seem to know what an important part of our transport system GA aircraft are. I think many of them do not know it exists. We have to fix that. Then we can start fixing the other things.
But that is another subject and probably not appropriate here.
Last edited by bushy; 16th Jul 2010 at 09:02.