Baron 55 or Seneca 2

[Mukosha]

Would like all your thoughts on the Sencca 2 as an aircraft for charter work in Africa. Seems there are two schools of thought.. those that love them and those that hate them!

Is this a good aircraft? What are its good and bad points? Can it carry much and whats its performance like out of bush strips? Is there anything I should watch our for when looking at possible buys?

I must confess i am drawn by the fact that it seems very affordable in comparrison to similar aircrafts. Is there a reason for this!?

Does anyone have another aircraft that they would suggest i rather look at for my purpose?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Happy flying!

[cavortingcheetah]

:hmm:

I take it that we disregard turbine aircraft because in my opinion nothing beats a King Air 200 with high flotation gear for bush flying. But it might be too big and also perhaps too expensive.
The Seneca 2 is an excellent machine. It was built by Piper to replace the Seneca 1, which was less than adequate as a commercial aircraft. The Senca 2's cost at birth was considerably less than any competition. That proably explains why its residual value is low compared with other machines.
I don't know how many 2s there are around with a rear passenger door and club seating. Plenty of Barons have this and the passengers really do like that facility. But then, you cannot compare a Piper to a Baron!
The Seneca 2 is turbo charged and has automatic wastegates. You have got to be quite careless in order to overboost the engines. If you are only going to use a couple of pilots then all well and good but if you are going to put the aircraft on a charter fleet and let 'anyone' fly it; I would consider a normally aspirated engined aircraft. Perhaps a Cessna 310 - Q series onwards, I think. Certainly the range is greater in the 310 and it's a lot more fun to fly.
I don't know what the spares holding of any aircraft agency in East Africa is like nor the reputation of their maintenance facilities.
You could perhaps contact the relevant agents in Johannesburg. Both Piper and Cessna agents there used to produce a cost per flight hour breakdown which was useful in economic determination. Placo was the Piper agent, Comair the Cessna.
Hope that's of some help or perhaps it just adds to the confusion?;)

[Mukosha]

Thanks for the info! Of course a King Air would be fantastic but you are right in that it is completely out of the quiestion for now as costs too much! The Senecca i am looking at as the rear passenger door and club seating. I will certainly contact the agents in SA for more information. The service and maintenance is very good in East Africa, most work is done up at Wilson in Nairobi. Thanks again!

[Shrike200]

My experience of the -II is limited to the training environment, something it's not ideally suited to. I have flown three separate examples. I believe they all have a pax door in the rear left side (a sort of combined pax/baggage setup, two separate panels?), with a pilot/front pax door on the right side at the front. All of the examples I flew had club seating. NONE of the -II's have automatic wastegates as far as I know, and it's very easy to overboost them as the MP gets quite sensitive (a large change for minimal throttle travel) in the boosted range. I have very limited knowledge of how they would stand up to the charter/bush operation. In the training role, I have seen problems (twice) with cracked cylinder heads, despite careful operation. Training does however necessitate a lot of power changes compared to normal ops. I found the engines to be a little fiddly to set up in the cruise, with any one parameter change generally affecting all the others (MP, FF, RPM). I would advise specific training in short field ops, as in my experience it's easy to end up botching a short field landing for example, striking the tail. The Seneca, if handled correctly, is capable of very good short field performance as far as I remember however. Payload wise, it's not that fantastic, with full tanks being a bit limiting. Thats all I remember however, no specifics I regret to say, so check that up with somebody who has an actual manual!

All in all, if handled by a limited group of caring pilots, I found it to be a nice machine.

[cavortingcheetah]

:hmm:

That must be correct about the automatic wastegate. I still have the operators manual tucked away somewhere but without reference to that, as I remember, there were two green overboost lights in front of the pilot. If either of these illuminated, usually on the take off run, the simple drill was to reduce the throttle setting? Please excuse my error. I last flew a two some thirty years ago and that only briefly for a US Multi Rating at sea level. I do remember that engine handling charateristics occupied a lot of my time which is not an ideal situation for a twin trainer.
If you want specific answers I could try to dig the book out. I think that I still have it tucked away in a mouldering corner.
One other machine does come to mind and that is, of course, the Bandeirante, Emb 110. A delight to fly, unpressurized and equipped with the wonderful PT6 engines. But as with the Beech, that might be too big and too costly. It is of course an excellent freighter aircraft and has been used very successfully in the UK as a night parcel post machine. The seats come out quite easily and quickly.
There used to be a couple or three operated by Bop Air in JHB. I suppose that NAC/Lanseria would know of any that might be still around.
My experiences of bush flying and aeroplanes have led me to this inescapable conclusion. Irrespective of the aircraft, so long as it is flown by only one or two pilots, maintanance problems (mishandling) are usually kept to a minimum. The moment an aircraft goes onto a charter fleet, to be flown by any pilot with a rating, engine handling expenses commensurate with inadvertent poor operation increase.
I don't kow how you could check a secondhand Seneca 2 for evidence of previous turbo charger misuse but that would be a high priority for me were I buying one. It should be fairly onbvious from what has been said that, were you to acquire one, it is probably not best put onto a training fleet. That would keep your insurance costs down too, as might nominated and experienced pilots only.
If you are down in Tanzania, perhaps it might be an idea, if you haven't done so, to factor ferry costs to Wilson and down time there into your costings. As might be obvious, aircraft maintenance that has to be underaken away from home base can be expensive, time consuming and logistically rather irritating. You know, pilots expect to be stay at The Norfolk or some such sybaritic and salubrious watering hole:O

[Solid Rust Twotter]

Props set low will be eaten alive on laterite strips, especially when parked for start and run up.

[cavortingcheetah]

:hmm:

Well then, an Islander or, such a neat piece of short field kit, a Do 228 !
I've got the 228 manual somewhere too.
With that machine you can land on Gulbenkian's taxi's turning circle.
You may guess what that is?:p
I'll bet you didn't know that most of the Khmer Temples at Angkor are built of laterite?:p :p :D

[birdlady]

As many are aware :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Im a little biased to the Seneca as its my favourite aircraft to fly. I may add Ive only got a couple of hours on her but it was shall I say love at first sight. ;) ;) I was convinced at one point that I would buy one and then rent it out as a training aircraft to cover costs
and then atleast once my training is complete I would have an asset at the end of the day and a couple of multi hours. Two problems with this. The seneca, as its a twin, has double the maintanance cost as a single and ofcourse the little greedy pencil pusher that loves to screw low houred pilots with insurance premiums. :( :( Some subscribe to the thought that a light piston twin will only take you furthur from the accident scene and I have to agree in some respects. If its a hot and high day engine performance and handling is very poor if one donkey should give out.

For the money in my opininion the Seneca is the best. If you compare prices of say the baron and the Seneca the Seneca comes up trumps. Or compare it with say the 206 - more expensive less room for pax and not that much faster. Moral of the story I still love the Seneca I think its a fantastic little aerie even with all her little faults...........................................:rolleyes: :rolleyes: ;) ;)

[B200Drvr]

You may all be forgetting the Avgas problems in Africa, you could find yourself very limited with loads, as you will often have to depart home with enough fuel for the round trip. Just go to Lubumbashi to view the result of an avgas shortage.

[cavortingcheetah]

:hmm: :eek:
That is a very, very good and succinct point.
In fact, I believe that there was quite a shortage of Avgas in ZA fairly recently. Reference to the African Aviation forum pages will probably trawl this up.
So there we are then. Back to the good old Dornier 228 which has high wings, fixed gear, a pilot's door and can land on that Gulbenkian thingy which was, of course, a sixpence, or shall we call it a tikkie?;)

[Shrike200]

Twotter for the win!!! ;) ;)

[corkscrew]

Would rather go for the Seneca III for charter work, its got a bit more horsepower (an extra 25hp a side) and can carry a bit more weight (makes a difference on charter) The instrument panel layout is also much better. A seneca III is not all that much more expensive than a II, the extra cash is well worth it in my view.

Seneca's are also a bit roomier inside compared to a baron.
The III will take off at gross weight within 400m at a lowveld bush strip, so no problems with short take off and landings.
The oleo's are not the best and they tend to go flat all the time if you in and out of dirt strips, they need to be well maintained if you dont want that problem.
Its a great all rounder aeroplane, does everything pretty well.
If you lose a donkey loaded up after take off you most probably gonna go down, that seems to unfortunatly be the standard with light twins.

The Seneca III can only take, more or less, a pilot + 3 pax with luggage if you fill up the tanks (III's came out standard with long range tanks, i think its around 125us gal), so I would immagine the II will be even more restricted in that respect. Not good if you wanna do charter work.

Good luck with your purchase, you gonna need it! :ok:

[Capt Chambo]

I did about a thousand hours in Senecas I & IIs out of Mombasa in the '80s doing probably the exact sort of work you plan to do in Tanzania.
My first thought is that I was flying them 20+ years ago and they weren't new then, so I can't imagine what state they would be in now! and of course these things were not designed to be heavily used in the rough envoirnment that is bush flying in East Africa.
That said it was excellent. The engines were very reliable regularly going to TBO, although as others have said the ones that were single pilot operated were better than the ones that everybody and anybody flew (5Y-CCH for those that remember). The engines had no automatic (modulating) wastegate, the boost was pilot controlled with a "pop-off" valve that opened at 40" of manifold pressure spilling excess boost. The yellow overboost lights came on at 38" to warn you that you were getting close to overboost. We also always ran them at idle for 5' mins post flight to allow the turbine impeller to run down before shutting the engine down. This was to ensure the turbine/impeller shaft and bearings continued to receive oil lubrication.
They all came with the club doors on the left hand side which was very convenient for passenger access, and a club seating is a nice option. There were two fuel configurations and it was very difficult to tell which was which. The standard combination was two inter-connected tanks in ech wing of 25usg each (IIRC). Most of the ones I flew then had the optional long range tanks which consisted of a further small tank between the "main tanks". I can't remember how much exra fuel this gave you.
Thanks to the turbos it was very good out of hot and high bush strips, the slab wing is also very forgiving and allowing for good slow flight characteristics. You have to be careful on landing as it has a tendecy to land very flat so you need to avoid landing on the nose wheel first. I flew the versions with the two blade props and we had to be careful not to chip the blades when operating over stony ground as prop clearance wasn't great. Also be very careful closing the nose baggage door, if it wasn't properly closed it would fly open at liftoff. The prop. wouldn't hit it but falling bags might hit the prop. and of course it is disconcerting!
It was a very good load carrier. ( I am not going to confess how good on a public forum!), with ample baggage space provided pax. bring soft bags that you can squeeze into the relevant baggage compartments!
Our servicing was mainly done in Nairobi (Wilson) by CMC aviation and they had a pretty good bunch of engineers who knew there stuff.
All that said I would tend to go where the others seem to have now gone and save up to buy a Caravan!

[Shrike200]

I did about a thousand hours in Senecas I & IIs....

You flew Seneca I's operationally?!? Brave man! I thought those four seats in the back was Piper's idea of a very bad joke! ;)

[Capt Chambo]

You flew Seneca I's operationally?!? Brave man! I thought those four seats in the back was Piper's idea of a very bad joke! ;)
I was young and very foolish! Now I can't even claim to be young! ;)

[kotakota]

Captain Chambo - how the devil are you ? The Great White Chambo if my addled Blantyre memory serves me well ? Sent North to cut the large white teeth in the Kenya charter scene ?
Great recall on the Seneca 11 which was a great servant of the coast charter boys but not very popular at Wilson as I recall. The altitude difference of the operators bases was always a bit of a red herring as we all flew into Wilson , Ngorongoro , Safari Club etc , but the coast charter scene had much lower yields than the 'upmarket' Wilson mob.
We all must all try to remember that the origin of the Seneca 1 was that it was a straight conversion of the Cherokee ( Njerogi ) 6 to 2 engines with retractable dunlops . Those of us who were early 'victims' of the 6 operation in hot and high East Africa were ecstatic at the arrival of the Seneca 1 , but as most of us already flew Aztecs/Navajos, Barons or Cessna 310/402 , we soon realised from the climb rate on 2 that an EFATO would definitely involve a straight-ahead or early landing rather than any heroics on the single-engine front.The loadsheets of the day did not bear much close scrutiny !That said , it was a great servant of coast charter , flying countless large tourists around the Parks with little or no drama and with good relaibility. The engineers found them easy ( and cheap ) to maintain , and some even got painted like punda milias ( zebras to the rest of you ).
The Seneca 11 was even better , quieter , better performance etc.
Apropos of nothing ,my favourites were the Baron ( the Merc of its day ) and the original 8 seat Navajo , although for all-out bush flying , the Aztec and C206 took a lot of beating.
Kwaheri.

[arcwi]

Mukosha,

It looks like you are facing ton of advise that you have to sift trough for the few gems. I would agree with Capt Chambo, I definitely agree with birdlady , but the rest I would mostly disagree with.

I own and operate Seneca II, one of the very few fine examples available in Africa. When I was looking for one, I simply phoned all dealers and created a spreadsheet with all the Seneca's available on the market at that time. BTW, the lowest cost one was a Tanzanian with run down engines and some 7-8,000 hours on the clock. I did not go for it, I selected low time, mid-life engines example, flown by a single ATPL pilot since new. And still, I got it with shot turbos. That was not the end of the world though, not that expensive to overhaul, and soon after that hickup I end up with a superb machine.

Standard comes with 2 x 200 HP engines that you can run at 100% power indefinitely or up to 105% power at 12,000 ft - again, indefinitely. Cruise leisurely at 175-180 kts, fast cruise at 190-195 kts, all at FL110-FL120. With 460 ltrs in the tanks and consuming 90-95 ltrs/hr, the range is great. My Seneca is very well equipped, and the price I pay is of course the high-ish empty weight. Nevertheless, I still can load full tanks and lift 4 adults with luggage or plan to a destination 1.5 hrs away under IFR (2hrs VFR) flight with 6 adults and luggage.

My best takeoff run on a sand runway with tad less than MTOW and 2200 ft ALT ELEV was around 400m.

At MTOW it will take of in less than 700m at FALA altitudes in a typical summer day. It climbs then at over 1000 ft/min, at mid-weights typically at 1500 ft/min. Single engine climb rate is around 250 ft/min, and it will maintain that at density altitude of over 13,500 ft - this only if your aircraft is well set up and fine tuned, like mine is...

The maintenance costs are probably lowest for a twin engine airplane - typical MPI costs me in the order of R6-7,000 if nothing brakes. The parts are low end priced, if not buying from Placo, this is...

Seneca II is very reliable aircraft, at least it has been very reliable for me for the last 4 years I have been flying it. And no one has illusions of asking premium for a good Seneca, compared to a Baron or likes...

[Capt Chambo]

kotakota you have outed me!
I agree the little Navajo and Baron were great, the real Mercedes of the light twin world. I also really liked the Cessna 310R, the Chieftan, and the Cessna 404.
Another thought regarding the Seneca (just so the thread remains on topic), the pilot doesn't require an Instrument Rating to fly it, which will help keep your costs down.
I still can't help feeling though that if everybody else is moving towards Caravans then that is the way you should be going too.

[Mukosha]

Which of these do you guys (with experience on them) think is better for charter work in Afirca?

In terms of carrying capacity, hardiness, fuel efficiency, maintenance, etc?

If you have flown any of the above or variants of them which performed best! Looking at them from both a pilot and an operators perspective.

[Shrike200]

Well, here's your older post as a starting point:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=233395&highlight=Seneca

[bianchi]

:D Good situational awareness Shrike200 ! "case closed" !

[JetPark]

At 50, I feel better now. I can still remember what I said and / or asked and / or did just the other day. I do forget now and again. But this one at age 26 has no hope I'm afraid :rolleyes:

[Mukosha]

Wow, this thread went on a lot longer than I expected and I must admit I did not check it recently. Thank you all for your great advice and insights. This definately seems to be a good little machine and I am quite excited about looking around the market for 2's and 3's.

I would dearly love to get a Caravan but as we all know the price is a little steep. Correct me if I am wrong but a good Seneca can be purchased for $150,000 or less?? However a Caravan is significantly more. Also I feel a smaller aircraft is easier to sell to small charter groups than a whole caravan. My loads would generally be 3 to 4 pax. Hopefully I could pay this initial plane off then look at the Caravan (which I have lots of hours on and love!) once I have established myself on the market.

Having said all this... does anyone know of some good seneca's on the market?? Definately looking for long range tanks and EB engines if possible on the II or the three as it comes. PM me if you have any leads.

Thanks again everyone.

[Mukosha]

I must confess to have let the other thread go and did not realise how much longer it went on. Thanks to all those who gave advice and thoughts.

[napoleon]

Give me an Aztec any time. Strong simple and reliable plenty of room for the PAX too.

[Fundi-Ya-Ndege]

Once you have flown a baron you would not ever think of going for the piper!
May be a little cramped for the pax but great performer in the usual hot and high conditions in East Africa. We always used to say that the Be55 would get in and out of just about any strip that a C206 could with similar loads but would get you there twice as fast!
Good luck with the decision though.:)

[NdekePilot]

Does anyone know of a website or other source of information with regard to the costs of running a King Air 200, ie running maintenance, MPIs, times between overhaul....and the costs thereof....of major components, ie engines, props, gear etc? For instance, buying a 200 with high hours on the engines is going to leave you with fewer revenue hours left to meet the costs of engine overhauls etc.
Any information or advice greatfully received.
NP.:ok:

[Mukosha]

Well since the matter has been raised. What are peoples opinions on the Aztec. Seems like a good hardy aircraft. I do have some concern with parts availability and the lack of a back door! But those who fly them reckon they are real work horses.

[jumbodrvr7]

Surprised nobody has said much about the Baron. I have experience flying Baron 55s in Africa on Charters, but cannot compare to the Seneca, nor can I give an owners perspective!

If you are looking at the Baron 55 you should ignore the A or B. These have 260hp IO 470s and a short nose and are really 4 seaters as it is difficult to load 6 adults and stay in CG range.

The C, D, and E 55s however are excellent 6 seaters from the pilots view. They Have 285hp IO 520s, no turbo to worry about, just raw power. Longer nose makes loading easier. I would not like to quote field length numbers but will just say that operating from typical bush runways of about 7-800m and altitudes up to 6000 I never had any problems at all. I agree with the comment that it can go anywhere a 206 will. Single engine performance is good up to about 5000 ft.

Quality? I have flown pipers and you cannot compare. Its like Merc S class versus Nissan Sunny. Expensive yes but you get what you pay for.

Now for the down side. It is not very comfy for pax. Reaching the rear seats is difficult and there is not much room. Also barons suffer a bit from damage to the flaps caused by stones on rough runways.

The 58 sorts out the comfort problem quite well but I assume it is a bit pricey for you.

Good luck!

[Mukosha]

Thanks Jumbodrv.. good info on the Baron. I was also suprised that so little has been said on it. Though surely the Merc to the Sunny is a rather harsh comparison!

The 55 just seems to have too little space in it. The 58 is an option and obviously a good on. Am just concerned that despite being an amazing machine from a pilots perspective there is very little space once again. Yes the nose is good.. but that is all you have. Also from an operators perspective, I hear that they are expensive to maintain and thirsty on the fuel. Is this true, can anyone confirm or refute this? Also I have read that anyone buying a Baron should look at models produced after 1984 as the whole cockpit layout was drastically improved. Of course this means that i am looking at a much newer machine with a corispondingly high price.

Anyone got some good advice on how to layout an operators spreadsheet? Something that will tell me how much I need to fly a month to make repayments and what I should charge my clients!?

[flyingmasai]

I flew over 1700 hrs the seneca 2 in Tanzania, great plane, get the job done.
It seems you from there, there is few company who used to operate them. Ask directly to them.