For C182, I was talking about someone who does not know yet what he like in an aircraft, say barely got a PPL and looking for family SUV, if he got 2-5 times more cash and wants a family SUV that has everything, my pick would be DA42/DA62 
If C182 & DA42/DA62 don’t fit the bill or are feels hard to fly & land, he should go fishing
Ibra wrote:
If he barely got his PPL but with 10 times more cash and he wants family SUV that has everything, my pick would be DA62
:) wrong! Cessna 421c!
It has got two engines AND pressurisation AND an emergency potty. :)
I don’t know about C421 but I gather it’s 6-controls? not sure if it’s the right mount for a fresh PPL (SE & ME) who does not know what he want to take his family, maybe it does not stall gently? does not land like a flower? and does not fly on one engine with a press of a button? or drinks way more?
C421 nice plane but it does cost a bit for fuel and if IFR for Eurocontrol charges.:)
My 1.5hrs multi engine time is in a 421C
A very smooth machine – basically similar despatch rate to a TBM but the guy bought it for ~100k and spent another ~100k on it. He dropped out of flying a few years later, via a King Air, which is an even better “family plane”
Yes, 6 levers, just like every twin intended for real pilots 
Peter wrote:
Yes, 6 levers, just like every twin intended for real pilots
You forgot the (DC3) tailwheel
Clipperstorch wrote:
If that is such a deal breaker why not exclude that kind of risk from the insurance?
I find the whole situation completely irrational. It looks to me as if some beancounters have taken over without having any real idea what they are on about and then randomly declare what is acceptable and what not. The insurance problem in the US has turned from a nuissance to the single gravest danger to most GA people these days. That is inacceptable I think.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
the single gravest danger to most GA people these days
Nobody I know is affected, or has mentioned this issue in conversation. Perhaps the insurance companies are targeting certified retractables flown by older pilots, given that all the US retractable pilots I know are under roughly 60 or 65 years old. Those that come to mind are flying flying a GP-4 Osprey, Lancairs, Marchetti SF 260.
Older guys locally seem to give up on complexity and more often fly RVs to age 80 or so. No insurance issues there either as far as anybody has mentioned. It could also be that the pilots I know aren’t in the market for hull insurance for their planes, don’t know, it’s not something that attracts a lot of conversation at any time.
PS I just remembered that a hangar neighbor sold his Cessna Bird Dog at age 82, decided to buy a Champ so as to have something to fly, and mentioned some issues with getting hull insurance after he bought it. He did come up with a solution.
@Silvaire reading at Beechtalk you come across a fair bit of evidence of experienced pilots not able to get insurance for odd reasons. For example some carriers don’t insure older complex aircraft, say pre 1970’s
There is a big difference between US insurers and European insurers.
One cannot generalise completely, but the US insurance scene has always been quite picky (selective, and not always in a predictable way), while the European insurance scene have been run much more on the basis of averaging the risks across lots of different aircraft.
I used to know one guy in the US who was paying $12k for a DA42. The DA42 is a low risk aircraft, but is little known in the US (diesel has basically failed in GA, with the Thielert debacle being the last nail in the coffin, and Americans will not forget for decades) and the insurers probably just said “WTF is a DA42?”, thought of a number and doubled it. Plus, he paid a few hundred k for it so he had hull value cover which really increases it. If you are flying some $50k plane then you probably won’t have hull cover (in the US) because somebody with a $50k plane can probably afford to replace it (in the US).
Some US TB owners also reported high premums, but then the TB is almost unheard of in the US too – due to inept marketing by Socata.
Regarding Beech aircraft, it’s very possible that somebody in the US analysed the business and found that particular types were a lot more likely to crash, perhaps especially carrying high net worth passengers… An A36 is way more likely to be one of these than a normal “4 seater” which, if turbo/TKS, is just a 2-seater in reality.
