Are Piper selling a lot of these piston PA46s?
Many say the Lyco engine is much better than the Conti one, in consuming cylinders, but vibrates more.
If the attitude of this sales team is replicated elsewhere I doubt if they are selling a lot of piston PA46s
It’s no wonder that the price of pre used aircraft is rising whilst the sales of new planes are falling.
It’s not the first time I have heard of this lack of professionalism by sales teams. Several years ago a French aviation magazine did an article about how they were treated and the lack of information received by many new aircraft sales teams.
The results were staggering when some of these aircraft were costing well over 1 million euros.
Compared to the outfits that sell luxury yachts or houses aircraft sales are distinctly amateurish.
I have a Mirage, got about 900 hours on it, and it makes book value on pretty much everything, including ground roll. But as others have said you really want an 800 metres runway with clear approach areas.
You also want to make sure your technique and your plane are good. That includes tyre pressure, which can have a large impact, and the mains are not easy to adjust.
I do disagree with the Meridian point, it really depends on how varied your use of the plane is. The Mirage has great range and is ideal for travelling, but also very nice for a VFR sightseeing trip.
On the engine, there are bad experiences, but there was a stat done by MMOPA which showed as many engine-related accidents in the turbine and with the piston version (adjusted for fleet size), which people find hard to believe, but seems legit. On my side I always fly as if the engine was going to fail, anyway, whatever the model – and that’s a lot easier in a PA46 with a 25k feet ceiling and a great glide performance. This morning I crossed the Alps from Milan to Munich, at FL220, I was never out of glide of an airport.
Looking at ASN there are more gear related incidents, runway excursions, hard landings, loss of control than loss of power. At least the last 80 listings of 279. Some loss of power on the JetProp and some on the Conti engines. Yes also two on the Lycoming of which one was a repaired one with wrong torque on the bolts of the cylinders which were repaired.
@denopa
Can you copy the stat done by MMOPA and show it us? Unfortunately my membership at MMOPA was declined probably because my bank refused payment to MMOPA. I still have to reinvestigate the case with my bank.
And as user denopa wrote, not only the destination is the aim also the way to it with the option to go low and high if necessary.
According to the salesman in the video Piper is selling 30 to 35 Piper M350s a yaer.
Tigerflyer wrote:
Looking at ASN there are more gear related incidents, runway excursions, hard landings, loss of control than loss of power.
Loss of power due to technical issues is generally an extremely rare event in SEP. Therefore it is not surprising that also in the Malibu stats it is not that common.
It is 10 times as likely that you kill yourself than that your engine will kill you. That is a sad fact. We pilots, however, tend to spend most of our time discussing engine failures because we believe that these other 90% are pure statistics but as I am a much better than average pilot I won’t kill myself so that for me only those <10% are the real risk …
But that is not a fault of us pilots: It’s human! Mountaineers, Bikers, etc. think exactly the same way…
Therefore – coming back to the topic – if you are not operating in extreme conditions (like frequently crossing vast area of water, etc.), I would not care about the differences in reliability of the powewrplant but rather think about not to crash by having a runway that is too short, etc…
Malibuflyer wrote:
I would not care about the differences in reliability of the powewrplant
I agree with the overall risk of engine failure leading to fatal crash is much less than all the other risks. LOC, CFIT, ICING, CB ect ect. A well-maintained Lycoming is overall very reliable from inflight engine failures. But the way I read Sebastians criticism of the engine installation in the Mirage/M350 is not so much related to total engine failures, but more the unpleasant experience of something that needs fixing often? Lots of thing in that department that will be catched before a total engine failure, but still expensive and not great aircraft ownership experience?
Range is often mentioned as what the piston version does better, most likely with good reason as long range and endurance helps a lot in planning and options. On question related to this. What is the range differences between turbine versions (Jetprop fx) and Piston versions If they go simmilar speeds? If one is going 200 KTAS and the other 260 KTAS its not really fair to compare range? In case the turbine version throttles back to a lower piston speed how much does the range improve (assuming high altitude cruising)?
THY wrote:
What is the range differences between turbine versions (Jetprop fx) and Piston versions If they go simmilar speeds? If one is going 200 KTAS and the other 260 KTAS its not really fair to compare range?
Same speed is also not a fair comparison. The original Malibu is clearly “bladder limited”. With the long range tanks (145 gal) you have a “range” of more than 9 hrs which will take you >1900NM.
For me the more relevant question is: If you have 5 hrs flight time (which is about the max. of what the people typically flying with me will tolerate in such a plane), how far does it take you. For the piston Malibu that is about 700NM
THY wrote:
On question related to this. What is the range differences between turbine versions (Jetprop fx) and Piston versions If they go simmilar speeds?
Going slow in the turbine does not help much with the range. Just as an example at FL300 our Meridian will go 255kt TAS on 225pph fuel or 240kt TAS on 200pph so maybe a 6% gain and at other altitudes the ratio might be worse. What helps is to climb as high as possible.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Loss of power due to technical issues is generally an extremely rare event in SEP
I agree but there is a huge amount of cases where the engine causes issues and needs fixing before the next flight which never gets recorded. I have had plenty of piston engine trouble but never made it into any statistics so far. Oil pressure low at run up, taxi back to maintenance, full overhaul, nobody notices except the checkbook ;-) Also if you do not fully trust the engine you tend to avoid missions with limited alternatives. I have flown IFR at night to the baltic countries SEP and the number of airports up there with a usable night time IFR approach are just not that many. Or you fly over an area with fog, or over water, over the alps in full IMC etc. and those are things I would probably not do any more SEP.
It would be completely unbelievable if an IO540/550 even remotely compared to the reliability of a PT6.
But collecting data is hard. Many years ago there was a (famous) study which found that some 10% of PA46 owners had in-flight shutdowns. I am sure this came up in a thread previously. It was however dodgy data because it was just posted on a PA46 forum, and those who had problems were much more likely to respond.
More e.g. here.
[ 2 identical threads merged ]
