Engine Failures Plague Airplane
Piper Aerostars, like the one that crashed near John Wayne Airport on Friday, have had a history of engine-failure accidents during takeoffs and can be an unforgiving aircraft in the hands of an inexperienced pilot, according to an aviation magazine specializing in private aircraft.
The Aviation Consumer said the Piper Aerostar has the highest accident rate among similar twin-engine small aircraft: with a fatal accident rate of 3.8 accidents per 100,000 hours of flight. The rate is almost three times higher than the median accident rate of similar two-engine planes, according to the magazine based in Greenwich, Conn.
“Few aircraft have gone through such dramatic highs and lows as the much-traveled Aerostar series. Although a hot performer, the aircraft has acquired a disastrous accident record,” Aviation Consumer concluded in its recently published Used Aircraft Guide.
Aircraft Called Safe
Piper company officials, however, say the aircraft is safe and has no design flaws or other problems that make it more hazardous than other twin-engine airplanes.
The plane that crashed in Newport Beach on Friday, killing a Canadian family of five, was a twin-engine, six-seat Piper Aerostar PA-60.
Dave Noland, an Aviation Consumer writer who specializes in Aerostar coverage, said the magazine conducted a safety study of the aircraft in 1984 and found that out of 18 similar twin-engine aircraft, the Aerostar ranked 17th in the rate of fatal crashes.
And in the latest issue of the Aviation Consumer’s used aircraft guide, the aircraft was ranked last among light twin-engine aircraft in safety. The number of fatal accidents of Aerostars is “about double that of the typical light twin and more than triple the rate of the Beach Baron, a closely comparable aircraft,” according to the guide.
Accident Rate
Since 1983, the National Transportation Safety Board has recorded 20 fatal accidents involving the aircraft. Matched with the number of hours flown, the fatal accident rate has risen to 4.6 per 100,000 hours, according to the Columbus Dispatch, an Ohio newspaper that investigated Aerostars after a fatal crash there.
The Aerostar was designed by the Ted Smith Aircraft Co. in Santa Maria, Calif., in 1964 and first flew 3 years later. The company was sold to Piper Aircraft, along with the Aerostar design in 1978.
Production of the Aerostar was discontinued in 1985, Piper Aircraft spokesman Joe Ponte said. Industry observers said Aerostars and other light aircraft models were discontinued about the same period because of a slowdown in sales.
Responding to criticism about the Aerostar, Ponte said that there is “nothing unusual about the aircraft” and that those who own the twin-engine planes “rave about them.”
“And it is not unusually difficult to fly,” Ponte said, adding that an Aerostar club has branches throughout the country.
According to Aviation Consumer’s Noland, Aerostars had problems in the fuel-delivery system that caused both engines to stop. And changes had to be made in its wings to correct stall characteristics that did not meet minimum Federal Aviation Administration requirements.
A stall is an abrupt loss of wing lift when the angle of attack--the angle at which the wing meets the air stream--is too high. Both problems were fixed with modifications to existing aircraft after mandates from the FAA, Noland said.
Cessna’s Record
In the survey by Aviation Consumer, the twin-engine plane with the lowest fatal accident rate was the Cessna 414. It had a rate of 0.8 fatal accidents for each 100,000 hours of flight time. The Beech 60 Duke and the Beech 76 Duchess fell in the middle of the 18-plane survey with fatal accident rates of 1.3 per 100,000 hours.
The Cessna 337 Skymaster was ranked 16th in the survey. It had a fatal accident rate of 2.5 per 100,000 hours, according to Noland and Aviation Consumer, which publishes twice monthly and is supported by its subscribers. The magazine, which is highly respected within the industry, carries no advertisements.
In a survey of accidents involving the Aerostar between 1978 and 1982, Noland said he found that six of the fatal crashes followed engine failure after takeoff. The Beech Baron, a similar twin-engine aircraft, only had two crashes involving engine failure during or after takeoffs in the same 5-year period. Noland said he found that figure interesting because Barons had been flown three times as many hours during that period as were the Aerostars.
Those six engine failures of Aerostars on takeoff during the 5-year period ending in 1982 happened at DuBois, Pa.; Hartford, Conn.; Sikeston, Mo.; Aspen, Colo.; Roanoke, Va., and Oxford, Conn. All the accidents resulted in deaths, Noland said.
Since the Aerostar was first produced, several different models known as the 600 and 700 series have been manufactured. The various models are almost impossible to tell apart, but the later ones have more powerful turbo-charged engines and pressurized cabins. The later models are capable of flying at 280 m.p.h., while the earlier 600s have a cruising speed of just over 250 m.p.h.
San Diego Crash
One of the most spectacular crashes of an Aerostar occurred in San Diego on Feb. 17, 1983. The pilot and four passengers died after the plane failed to gain altitude after takeoff from Montgomery Field and plunged into a nearby parking lot of a busy discount store.
No one was hurt on the ground when the plane skidded across Balboa Avenue, one of the busier streets in San Diego, and landed in the parking lot, destroying three cars. The plane burst into flames. The pilot was severely burned and died the next day in a Utah hospital.
The crash fanned an already simmering controversy over airport safety at Montgomery Field, which is surrounded by residences and businesses.
Another crash of an Aerostar in Columbus, Ohio, recently killed race driver Al Holbert.
After that crash, the Columbus Dispatch quoted Piper spokesman Robert Scott, who himself had logged 3,000 hours in Aerostars, as saying the aircraft is very easy to fly.
Noland said experienced pilots with a lot of hours in the Aerostar cockpit have the ability to deal with emergencies, especially those occurring during takeoffs and landings.
But less experienced pilots can “get eaten alive” by the aircraft if they do not react quickly enough in emergencies.
“The pilots in fatal Aerostar crashes, although generally of a broad flying experience, tended to have few hours in the Aerostar,” according to the third edition of the Aviation Consumer Used Aircraft Guide.
“Median experience was just 70 hours . . . compared to 300 hours . . . for pilots of fatal (crashes of Beech) Barons.
“Most of the Aerostar’s fatal accidents are related to the design of the aircraft in our opinion,” the guide said. “Weather played a surprisingly small role in Aerostar accidents, in contrast to most other aircraft.”
CRASHES AT JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT Here’s a chronology of plane crashes at John Wayne Airport:
Sunday, July 22, 1979: Fullerton man dies when his single-engine plane crashes just north of Upper Newport Bay, in Newport Beach. He radios John Wayne Airport saying his engine has died, and he will try to make it to the airport.
Thursday, June 5, 1980: Twin-engine plane with two people aboard explodes in mid-air and crashes into the sea 5 miles from Newport Beach. No survivors.
Sunday, Aug. 10, 1980: Single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza loses power while waiting to land at John Wayne Airport, hits a moving car and crashes in an intersection. Pilot, his wife and the four people in the car walk away with just several cuts.
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 1981: An Air California Boeing-737 jetliner carrying 119 people traveling down John Wayne Airport runway crash-lands. Passengers are treated at hospitals.
Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1981: A student pilot practicing solo landings crashes her single-engine Cessna-152 light plane near John Wayne Airport’s auxiliary airport runway. The engine stalls, the left wing drops and the plane flips over. She is injured.
Tuesday, March 2, 1982: A pilot, his wife and their two sons escape serious injury when their single-engine Beechcraft plane makes a forced landing on an empty baseball field at Corona del Mar High School. The plane has just taken off from John Wayne Airport en route to Yuma, Ariz.
Friday, Sept. 17, 1982: Two private planes, a Cessna-210 single-engine and a twin-engine eight-passenger Beechcraft-200, collide over Orange County. One crashes onto a Huntington Beach sidewalk, killing its pilot and passenger. The other larger plane makes a successful emergency landing at John Wayne Airport.
Sunday, Oct. 3, 1982: A pilot and two passengers escape serious injury when their Beechcraft Bonanza single-engine plane loses power on takeoff. The plane belly-flops and skids down the John Wayne Airport runway.
Thursday, Sept. 8, 1983: A pilot and his passenger die when they plunge their Cessna-172 Skyhawk small plane into the ocean off of Newport Beach. No known cause of crash.
Sunday, May 27, 1984: Minutes away from landing at John Wayne Airport, a pilot and two passengers crash-land their single-engine Bellanca plane in an Irvine field. One minor injury is reported.
Sunday, June 10, 1984: A small twin-engine Cessna Skymaster airplane crash-lands on John Wayne Airport runway because of landing gear failure. No one is injured.
Chronology researched by Susan Davis Greene.
