Engine Failure

[20driver]

Interesting Thread

SN_3 Guppy - Looking at the NTSB form 830

2. Substantial Damage - means damage or failure which adversely affects the structural strength, performance or flight characteristics of the aircraft, and which would normally require major repair or replacement of the affected component

Your incident certainly involves substantial damage. I find it very hard to believe the FAA would not have consider this to be the case. Performance and flight characteristics were adversely affected by your own account. The damage would be a major repair. Enough to write the plane off I suspect.

Something does not pass the smell check here.


IO-540's has written a lot if stuff that is incredibly useful to anyone who wants to use GA for a practical purposes. I'm guessing that includes a lot of people in this forum

Good practical advice from Big Pistons. I have looked through NTSB reports for years and almost every report involving engine issues was caused by fuel mis management or flying a plane that belonged on the ground. Anyone who takes a plane out from MX and heads in IMC or night is playing the odds. I love the ones that include lines like "unidentified liquid stains noted on the ground under the plane that had not flown for X months"

Single engine - if you fail on takeoff get the nose over very fast and take what comes straight ahead. The odds are trying to maneuver is a going to make it worse. If you have altitude flying the airplane all the way down means you are likely to walk away. Energy is a function of velocity squared, so controlling the speed is what counts. Trying to finesse a crash, I guess if you have enough practice it makes sense.

There are a lot of things that might happen to you flying GA. Operating a well maintained plane with some reasonable caution on fuel means engine failure is far down your list of potential problems.

Back to the OP - what was the cause of the failure?

20 driver

Also - what do people think of helmets and airbags?

[youngskywalker]

1200 hours or 12000 hours, it means very little, all pretty meaningless. It's what you do with those hours that count. I have a mate with barely 1500 tt but a large chunk of those on fast jets, worth far more than 12000 spent looking out the window while the autopilot flies.

The point I'm making is that if IO540 has 1200 hours then he's doing far better than the majority of private flyers and going places where most will never even attempt.

[vee-tail-1]

IO 540 and Fuji Abound are one of the main reasons I come to this forum.

[Contacttower]

Over how many hours of flight time in single engined pistons were your ten engine failures Guppy? I'm just curious to compare your experience with that of others here.

[IO540]

I'm guessing that actual incidences of engine failure are quite a bit higher than that... anybody care to guess how frequent?

If you are speaking of engine stoppages where it never restarted:

Without doubt that is true for twins, where an enroute engine failure should be a non-event and would not be reported unless somebody wants to drag someone's nose through the dirt to draw attention to bad maintenance**. EFATOs often kill everyone aboard (they require good pilot currency) which helps to swell up the fatal accident stats for twins (another factor is the typically more demanding mission profiles flown in twins).

It may also be true for singles. I am certainly aware of cases (years ago) where somebody landed a school plane in a field, an instructor went to retrieve it, and flew it back, and no fault was found or reported. Maybe carb heat, who knows? But this would be very rare, because fields landings are not easy to cover up.

It has been suggested that engine failures are more common in twins than in singles; reasons offered have been a) more vibration, due to the engine being less rigidly mounted on the wing spars than on a single's firewall; b) longer control cable runs; c) longer fuel pipe runs; d) a pilot of a twin will be less aware of something "funny" with the engine because it is further away, so a fault can develop unnoticed; e) some twin owners, particularly some commercial operators, definitely have a less critical attitude to maintenance, running on condition, etc because they have a spare engine. The last one is controversial but enough twin owners have made this very clear that I don't doubt it for a moment

Diamond went to avgas for their US sales of the DA40 but they continued to sell the Thielert DA42 out there. Go figure, as they say...

** Early on in my TB20 ownership, I had loads of problems with autopilot failures. (Actually they continued but got a lot less bad). One failure which happened with me not present, with the pilot who was an instructor (the fake-ATP one I referred to in previous postings) reporting that the aircraft was nearly inverted within seconds, was something I wanted to MOR. I was discouraged from doing this by various people, him included, on the grounds that a MOR will stick like the proverbial to a blanket. I am now less than 100% sure this incident actually happened (for reasons too long winded to go into here) but I did contact the CAA and they weren't too bothered about it.

[englishal]

You are only required to report the following under NTSB 830 for aircraft under 12,500lbs:

1) Flight control system malfunction or failure; (2) Inability of any required flight crewmember to perform normal flight duties as a result of injury or illness; (3) Failure of structural components of a turbine engine excluding compressor and turbine blades and vanes; (4) In-flight fire; or (5) Aircraft collide in flight; (6) Damage to property, other than the aircraft, estimated to exceed $25,000 for repair (including materials and labor) or fair market value in the event of total loss, whichever is less.

Not quite...You are also required to report any "accident" in addition to the above and the definition of an accident is:

Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.

Substantial damage means damage or failure which adversely affects the structural strength, performance, or flight characteristics of the aircraft, and which would normally require major repair or replacement of the affected component. Engine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered “substantial damage” for the purpose of this part.

I guess in their wisdom that the FAA decided that

A large, jagged hole was left with most of the windscreen gone, and the interior trim, headliner, and plastics pulled apart and dangling. The glareshield and top of the instrument panel were outside the cockpit, in front of us.

...was not "substantial damage"...though of course we weren't there and it may have not been as bad as I imagine from this description....

[Fuji Abound]

IO 540 and Fuji Abound are one of the main reasons I come to this forum.

I am flattered - thank you. There are a great many posters on here I enjoy reading, yours included.

1200 hours or 12000 hours, it means very little, all pretty meaningless.

To be fair to Guppy he has a point. In reality hours count. In reality variety and expiences count for more. I have had the pleasure of flying with guys who have a huge number of hours on a large number of types. It shows, it shows from the moment they start flying the aircraft. I enjoyed doing my multi rating and I would recommend anyone do so, even if they dont go on to fly multis. Why? Well I think it stretches your flying skills so when you fly simple singles the management of the aircraft seems very straight forward. In the same way I would recommend anyone to do some aeros. I recall when I started a big grin and a lingering thought - "I cant believe the aircraft / I could do that". I had the great pleasure of spending a few hours in a propoer commercial sim recently. Working with the guys doing engine failures, engine fires, single engine approaches to minima, cat 111 approaches with an autopilot failure etc, all provides invaluable lessons.

[20driver]

Back to OP

As several have stated here it is all about risk management, or maybe more ,risk evaluation.

Several years back there was an article in a flying mag were the writer was unable to find a single case of an engine failure in the pattern causing a fatality or a reportable incident\accident in the NTSB data base. I read a lot of the NTSB summaries and cannot recall a single such event myself. (Take offs excepted, we had a very sad case here of a T-210 which ingested the recently, and improperly installed, air filter on take off. The pilot was killed)

In that period there were a large number of fatalities involving maneuvering flight in the pattern, often stalls on the base to final turn.

One problem of the old mantra of stay close enough to the airport to be able to land in the case of an engine failure is you edge in too close, setting yours self up for a steep turn at low altitude and airspeed. That is a dangerous corner to be in.

In terms of smoking holes it would seem keeping a wider pattern to avoid steep turns, a known and persistent hazard, and accepting the so small it is not recorded risk of an off airport landing due to an engine failure is a good deal.

20 driver

As an aside, our local field was an Enstrom dealer and flight school for several years. After the fields owners third auto rotate into someones back yard he called a truck, had the helicopter hauled away and got out of that business line. He is still with us at 80 plus.

[IO540]

hours count

Of course every bit helps but I get suspicious when somebody throws around numbers like 18000hrs. It is almost impossible to achieve that in GA; even high end GA. You would need to have been an instructor for several decades but then your experience is probably low (due to not going anywhere).

One has to be talking about long haul airline pilots.

[Fuji Abound]

Well Mr Guppy it is certainly a good story.

There is some phraseology in your report that a pilot would not use and is a bit of a give away, but you have done a good job otherwise.

[24Carrot]

I just finished a very long day flying that concluded coming out of Afghanistan. I flew 11.4 hours today, and will fly that much again tomorrow, after getting legal minimum rest.

If I were in that position, I would not give a flying f*** about what anybody on pprune thought about anything. I would be getting some sleep.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

There are thousands of pilots with 18,000 hours plus.

I retired with over 30,000 accident free hours when I turned seventy, at that time I was still actively flying in the air show circuit in Europe.

I started my commercial flying career flying a J3 Cub spraying tobacco in southern Ontario.

Now that my flying career is spooling down I am building a Piper J3 clone which will bring my career full cycle.

In between those two time periods I have lost track of what I flew but it included a lot of different machines both fixed and rotary wing.

So 18,000 hours is really not that unusual.

[IO540]

Indeed, and I know quite a few myself (some ~25k) but not many log 18k hrs in GA.

Apart from some commercial opportunities most piston GA flight is not remunerated and to log 18k hrs you will spend of the order of US$2M (two million bucks) of your own money, after tax.

A typical airline pilot who flies piston GA also will not be flying IFR GA. Most of them get plenty of IFR at work and have zero interest in hacking IFR in piston singles or twins (I know this because I have flown with a fair number of them). They prefer to fly for fun, so they fly rag and tube types, homebuilts, etc. And they don't log 18k hrs in these.

So, not impossible - just exceedingly unusual.

[Fuji Abound]

I retired with over 30,000 accident free hours

Chuck

You need to have a word with or friend Mr Guppy, his accident record over a lot less hours looks like a disaster zone. Statistically you would want to keep him as far away as possible from anything with wings.

[20driver]

Question for Chuck

You've flown a lot of hours in a range of conditions. How many engine failures have you had? If any how many were in GA or piston operations?

Despite the digressions I think it is still an interesting question, what is the likely hood of an engine failure in GA?


Thanks

20driver

[IO540]

You said you're skeptical about people who have 18,000 hours who fly general aviation, or who gained that experience in general aviation.

It's your constant reference to these hourly totals, which (except in highly unusual - in Europe - occupations) cannot have any relevance to this piston GA engine reliability debate.

what is the likely hood of an engine failure in GA?

I think the best order of magnitude guide is what was posted earlier by Englishal. Unless you are running particularly dubious practices, you are unlikely to get one before you finally fail your medical...

Unfortunately some people choose to interpret such a statement as saying that one should not train for one, etc. which is obviously completely wrong.

[IO540]

It's the mindset and the preparedness to address it when it does happen, that counts.

Let me guess.... you are in the military???

Every second of every flight, it's 50%.

OK, Now we are getting somewhere.

Now I know what line of work you are not in: statistics

Just as well, since 87.3% of statistics are made up on the spot, and if you ran the business it would be 100%.

I have an accident-free history

[24Carrot]

Every second of every flight, it's 50%. Either it will continue to run, or it won't.

That's 50/50 possibilities, which are different from probabilities.

For example you either are or are not a pilot. The possibilities are 50/50. The probabilities need not be.

[Fuji Abound]

My recent forced landing was not the result of choosing a poorly maintained airplane, nor the result of choosing a poorly structured operation. I had a very unusual turbine bearing failure while descending a steep, smoke-filled canyon in formation behind another airplane, to drop fire retardant on burning government structures. All the oil left the engine, and the engine continued to operate very satisfactorily, with no indication of any problem in the cockpit, until I reached the bottom of the canyon and attempted to exit.

I would love to read the rest of that story. Did there happen to be a handy airport at the bottom of the canyon or a road from which the aircraft could subsequently be recovered.

By the way you dont happen to know DFC do you?

[IO540]

DFC is the man you should marry. It would be a marriage made in heaven.