Total personal hours vs engine failures

[tiger26isfinals]

All,

I've posted this here as I feel that I’ll get more scope in terms of hours flown and differing experiences. I appreciate it’s not necessarily instructor specific so please feel free to move elsewhere as seen fit!

Following on from a conversation at my airfield the other day, I’m wondering how many total hours people have vs the number of engine failures that resulted in a forced landing or precautionary landing.

Cheers.

[TowerDog]

16,500 hours, no engine failures or forced landings. Clean living..

[Dan Winterland]

16300 hours. 15 engine failures. 12 on 4 engine aircraft, one on a twin and 2 on singles. Both resulted in forced landings at an airfield, both successful.

[B2N2]

About 12,000hrs, two engine failures on light piston twins and 6(!) partial power losses on light piston singles but that was mostly due to two flight schools with crummy airplanes.

[Big Pistons Forever]

7800 hrs

SEP: 1 full failure 1 partial

MEP (light): 2 Full failures

MEP (heavy) : 3 Full failures

Turboprop (light) No failures

Turboprop (heavy) 3 full failures

[kenparry]

15000 hours. No engine failures while in an operating seat, but one as pax in an HS-125, 30 min short of destination - we landed there. Also in FJ days a grandstand view of my wingman having an engine fail in a single jet, followed by a successful ejection.

[foxmoth]

Depends what you mean by failure. I have taken a swan through an A330 engine which was subsequently shut down because we were losing oil, also shut down a DC10 engine due to low oil and then had an engine stop on me during aeros in a Tiger Moth which is the only forced landing in 21,000+ hours but never really had an engine fail as such.

[beamer]

20000 plus mil/civ. A couple of precautionary shutdowns on a four engined aircraft due to oil/hydraulic problems rather than failure per se. Lots of actual shutdowns for training purposes ( 4 eng turboprop ) in order to demonstate shutdown and airborne relight procedures -all successful.

[Bill Macgillivray]

20,000 plus (mil.& civ.) and total of four (two s/eng. inc. one eject) and two multi - no great problem! Some times you are lucky!

Bill

[BEagle]

Quite a few Conway failures in the VC10K during the 5000 or so hours I had on it. One at MTOW / ISA+ quite a bit at Bahrain just after VR, well handled by the co-pilot. Perhaps the most entertaining was during my IRET; on a simulated 3-eng go-around one of the others let go quite spectacularly! But we were quite light and the '10 had bags of thrust, so after a bit of throttle readjustment a routine 3-eng circuit and landing was uneventful. Once did a 3-eng ferry back from Keflavik; during the climb one of the remaining engines surged rather impressively; fortunately it recovered OK; some component had been wrongly adjusted and we were well outside the temp/alt/rpm range which would normally cause a surge.

A few rough running engines on light aircraft too, but no serious events. Seeing oil spreading itself across the windscreen during on of my student's slow rolls was a bit interesting though. We left the power set as it was and climbed for altitude as she flew us back to Abingdon; after the resulting PFL pattern, we shut down and got out to find the aircraft covered in oil because one of the groundcrew hadn't secured the oil filler correctly. Unlike civilian practice, in the Bulldog the groundcrew checked the oil, secured the cowling flap and signed for it in the F700 - we didn't do any routine checking ourselves. It was the last in a series of poor servicing events by the contract ground crew person in question and he was invited to find another job.

At Brawdy I had a lot of thumping and banging in a Hunter just after take-off, so advised the leader that I might have a problem. Off with 2 x 230 tanks and a fixed power GCA followed. Nothing wrong with the engine although some settings were tweaked during the subsequent engine ground run. One of the staff told me that if the nosewheel rubbing strip didn't stop the wheel rotating after take-off as it should, it was likely that the tyre could rotate for quite a while and any manoeuvre could cause vibration - we found that the nosewheel was out of balance and the rubbing strip looked clean, so I guess that's what the problem had been...

[Meikleour]

Total time 23,000hrs.

4 ENG Large Turboprop 1 engine failure on rotation + 1 3-ENG Ferry on same type (very interesting exercise and not one I would wish to repeat!)
4 ENG Large Jet 2 inflight shutdowns ( 1 surge and overheat + 1 rundown )
1 engine failure on take-off roll (Aborted and shutdown with both bottle discharged) large amount of the turbine section exited the engine - engine 20,000 hrs on the wing!
1 multiple engines damaged by bird ingestion leading to very high vibrations on 2 engines but these were kept running until after landing.

[rarelyathome]

Lots of hours willy waving. Perhaps the question needs to be broken down. Hours SEP, MEP, turbine.

[Genghis the Engineer]

About 850hrs microlight, one messy failure (EFATO to hedge), one failure that put me in a field with nothing but inconvenience. 6 engine failures test flying - all restarted in the air. All bar one of the failures with Jabiru engines - which probably account for about a 6th of my microlight time.

About 950hrs SEP, one partial leading to a forced landing on a runway, one total leading to a field landing, one stoppage during aerobatics, restarted in the air.

About 200hrs military and civil flight test observer, no failures, one very alarming compressor stall in a Jaguar.

I am an obsessive practicer for engine failures - total and partial!

G

[foxmoth]

Lots of hours willy waving
if you mean people answering with Jet hours etc I think it is more trying to answer the question properly - I could have just put 3 failures, 1 forced landing 21k+ hours but that would not really have given a proper answer, if the question had asked about failures on GA aircraft and SEP hours then I would have just put that but that was not what was asked.

[BigEndBob]

In 15k sep over 40 years;
Engine no response from pfl, ended up in a field with my instructor on basic flight training.
Dropped valve, put a/c down in a field.
Engine trying to stop at altitude, landed and engine caught fire, carb fault.
Section of piston broke off in c152, quick landing as i rejoined airfield.
Holed cylinder and short cct and landing.
Then nothing for the last 20 years until;
Recently cracked cylinders requiring quick landings.

[ZeBedie]

20 000 hours jet/turbo prop - one slow, insidious double engine failure in a HS125 due to contaminated fuel. Landed with some thrust available on one engine.
3000 hours light single/twin - no failures.

[tiger26isfinals]

Thanks all for the replies. I probably should have structured the question better...my bad.

[Edgington]

1500 Hrs No engine failures but had to shutdown an engine twice on a MEP due to throttle stuck at high power setting...

[Phororhacos]

I probably should not be posting on this forum as a non-instructor, but in 2000 SEP hours I have had 1 partial loss of power with a rough running engine about 1000 ft after take off. Safe return to base.Turned out to be a magneto timing problem.

[Straighten Up]

950hr SEP

1 EF in cruise C172 due fuel selector valve incorrectly positioned when changing tanks (pilot error) - restarted.
2 x partial both in PA28, both around 800' during climb out, landed back on cross runway. 1 carb issue, 1 faulty mag - both power checks completely normal.

[Dan Winterland]

I don’t think there is any ‘willy waving’ going on. Posters are replying to the question, which the OP admitted could have been framed better. If he had asked how many failures in GA training types, there would have been different answers, in my case 2 failures in about 2500. Also, the definition of a failure is subjective. I used landing with an engine shut down, regardless of the reason. I didn’t however count the engine off landings in a motor glider I used to own, where the engine couldn’t be restarted in flight. I did land it in a field once, but hand started and took off again. Those were self inflicted.

[Atlas Shrugged]

TT: 16000+

SEP: circa 1100 - 1 partial, 1 catastrophic - both Lycoming

Turbine: 14000+ - 1 uncontained CF6-50E2