I am going to repeat this as I consider it vitally important to flying LIGHT TWINS!
The other engine gives you more options! With more options come more choices! With more choices the option to make the wrong choice!
Light twins have a bad accident record and frankly I blame the training which is more directed at the pilot moving on to flying aircraft which will climb at 1000 fpm on one.
The majority of the twin rating revolves around shutting down an engine and going for a blue line climb
What happens to the poor pilot desperately flying blue line with minimal climb when the aircraft hits sinking air and everything goes down hill fast?
He sees a descent pulls back and blue line speed is fast gone or the pilot who shuts down an engine still producing 30% power because he is so channel trained that he goes into the blue line mode on automatics?
Light twin training should involve lateral thinking and decision making exploring all the options open to him.
Every engine failure will be different! in different conditions, different weights, different temperatures, different types of failures and the pilot should be trained to being able to identify the best solution even if that means shutting both down and heading to a field.
What does a light twin do best on one engine? It certainly is not climbing! It cruises well on one engine so why not look at setting up a cruise! Take a Seneca Blue line is around 89 kts from memory. Let the aircraft take up level flight it will accelerate to 120 kts, trim it! now trim back and let it step climb till the speed decays to 100 kts. set up level cruise again accelerate to 120 and trim back to 100 kts again. Try it and add this option to flying blue line or closing both .
Only then will we get an improvement in the bad accident stats with twins
Pace