The NTSB factual report on a November 10, 2013 crash of a Mitsubishi MU-2 says that the pilot had 11.5 hours of dual in the airplane and that was also his total turbine time (though he had a fair amount of multi). He elected to fly solo after 11.5 hours of MU-2 time and crashed just before what would have been his first solo landing. His family is now suing Honeywell, et al., claiming that an engine decided to fail a minute or so before arriving at the runway (story). The Honeywell TPE331 pilot notes say that “a mean time between in flight shut down of more than 63,000 hours has been attained.” Note that this is not the mean time between failure. This includes engines that are shut down because an oil pressure or temperature gauge becomes defective, for example. If we take the last five minutes of flight as critical due to the proximity to the ground, the lawsuit essentially says that it is more likely that a 1 in 756,000 probability event occurred (engine shutdown during a randomly selected five-minute block of operation time) than that a pilot with virtually no turbine experience or experience with the MU-2 crashed the notoriously tricky airplane through pilot error. (The MU-2 is probably easier to fly than a jet from the same era but due to its lack of turbojet engines or weight over 12,500 lbs. it did not require the special type rating that the pilot of a jet needs. This led to a high accident rate, the imposition by the FAA of some special training requirements, and the devaluation of used MU-2s to about half the price of comparable Beechcraft King Air turboprops.)
[Note that it is unconventional for someone with this level of training to be flying solo. Insurance companies typically like to see the new owner of a complicated airplane with a “mentor pilot” for between 10 and 50 hours following the completion of an intensive training course. A 40-year-old MU-2 is a particularly bad plane in which to solo as it presents the pilot with a whole wall of switches and gauges (Google Image Search).]
It will be interesting to see what the jury makes of this case.
Related:
The USAF uses contract pilots in MU-2’s down here (Tyndall AFB, training F-22 pilots and others firing standoff missiles at drones over the northern Gulf of Mexico). They lose an MU-2 every few years even with very experienced pilots. Not sure what they are doing, something about scoring the missile exercise. It’s a widow-maker.
http://www.newson6.com/story/27587080/family-files-lawsuit-over-owasso-plane-crash-that-killed-perry-inhofe
“William Angelley, a Dallas-based attorney who specializes in aviation law, says the NTSB got it wrong.
“The NTSB missed this one,” he said in a news release.
Angelley, who flew helicopters in the U.S. Navy before beginning his legal career almost 20 years ago, said the cause of the left engine failure is clear.
“My investigators found it within thirty minutes. Plus, it’s right there in the NTSB’s own data. If they didn’t see evidence of the malfunction, they either weren’t looking or didn’t know what they were doing.”
Angelley filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Tulsa County on Tuesday, December 9, 2014 on behalf of Inhofe’s wife and two sons.
The suit names as defendants Honeywell International, the manufacturer of the engines; Landmark Aviation Services and Standard Aero, which it says did work on the engine that was shut down; and Intercontinental Jet Service Corporation, which is says had reinstalled the engine on the airplane.
The lawsuit seeks in excess of $75,000 in damages.
Angelley disputes the NTSB’s statement that the airplane should have been flyable on one engine. He says the left engine failed after the airplane’s landing gear and flaps were extended. “That set up an impossible situation for Dr. Inhofe. Virtually no one could have recovered from that. There is simply too much drag and not enough power.”
It seems to me that the family should have also sued Mitsubishi for designing an airplane that was unflyable on one engine – this would be a defect in a multi-engine plane. Unless what Angelley is saying is not true, which I doubt – as an officer of the court, he would surely never lie.
Even if the airplane was flyable on one engine, it would still be negligent to build a defective engine or make defective repairs (strange BTW that, if he knows (but for some reason doesn’t state) the exact cause of the shutdown that he has to sue 3 different parties – you would think that for such a simply located defect the arrow of causation would point to only one of them). However, if the plane COULD have been flown by a reasonably trained pilot but not by the late Dr. Inhofe, then he would have contributed to his own death and the damages would be reduced. But Angelley tells us that VIRTUALLY no one could have flown that plane.
I’m also shocked to hear about the incompetents at the NTSB. I thought they were one of our better government agencies, but apparently they don’t know what they are doing. Next time there is a crash, they should just hire Angelley’s investigators – they will find the cause in no time flat.
I’m sure that in a modern aircraft with FADEC, etc. it would be trivial to implement a data recorder (even automobiles that sell for under $20,000 have data recorders nowadays). But how hard/expensive would it be to retrofit an older aircraft such as the MU-2 with a data recorder?
Also, I wonder that, since the plane was “virtually” unflyable on one engine with flaps and gear down, whether it would have been possible to put them back up again while the pilot worked on restarting the engine?
From another story:
The mystery the NTSB was unable to solve was why the engine on the MU-2 was shut down in the first place and why the airplane was configured as it was, with flaps and gear extended, as such is not the engine-out operating procedure as required in SFAR 108 mandated training.
Read more at http://www.flyingmag.com/technique/accidents/ntsb-more-questions-answers-inhofe-mu-2-crash#A75YoJCybwUVSCtz.99
Another example of the maxim that the 2nd engine takes you to the scene of the crash.
I predict that the family will win the lawsuit. The jurors will be presented with the horrible track record of the MU-2, the pilot was probably competent (when flying other airplanes), and the scenario that the family lawyers will describe will be very convincing.
Less than 12hours of experience in a MU-2 is way too little, but the MU-2 has killed many very, very competent pilots. The defense of the airplane is always the same: if the pilot would have had better training… Well, you can say that the Bell X-2 is a safe airplane when flown by Chuck Yeager.
Airplanes are all about compromises, the MU-2 offers a lot of utility in exchange of some blood, that is the deal.
I find it difficult to believe that the insurance company was fine with the low time of the pilot in the MU-2. If the terms of the insurance contract were violated the defense lawyers may have a chance (I still bet on a plaintiff win).
Izzie: How hard is it to retrofit something into a certified aircraft, such as an MU-2? For a little Cessna multiply the cost of the hardware by about 100X to compensate the manufacturer for the cost of dealing with the FAA. For a larger plane such as the MU-2, multiply by 500X or 1000X because the regulations are more stringent.
Is the MU-2 impossible to land on one engine? By definition it cannot be impossible if it is a certified twin. And in fact supposedly the accident pilot was practicing single-engine approaches (and landings?) earlier on the same day with his instructor.
Is the MU-2 unsafe? Perhaps the best article on the subject is http://flycasey.com/beechcraft-king-air-200-vs-mitsubishi-mu2/ because it is written by someone who seems to have a lot of experience flying the MU-2 and the most obvious alternative.
The shame of it is that this would have been a great plane for Dr. Inhofe IF he had made it it past his first 100 hrs or so in it (assuming ANY individual needs a twin turboprop as a personal aircraft – seems a bit much to me). He seemed like just the kind of guy who could have been trained to handle this beast and he would have gotten the hang of it eventually. As you say, no one is born knowing how to fly, especially something as complex and unforgiving as an MU-2 If he was able to afford $400,000+ for his MU-2, he should have sprung for a few thousand more for a mentor pilot for a while. This does not seem like the kind of plane that you would want to solo in ASAP even if it permitted, so it was some sort of hubris that led him to do it. He was a bold pilot so he did not get a chance to be an old pilot.
It will be interesting to see if a jury can be persuaded. Part of the reason that anything aviation related costs 100x what it would elsewhere (aside from the FAA) is because of the liability tail. If this was an automobile engine made in 1974, it would have been off the road decades ago. Even if it were still around, any engine failure would be attributed to age and wear and tear and the original mfr. would not be seeing lawsuits 40 years after the engine left their factory.
Interesting that this is a relative of Jim Inhofe, one of the most pro-general aviation politicians of the last 30 years, and who was a key sponsor of the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994, which significantly limited manufacturer liability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act
@Izzie: Not sure about the gear, but Wikipedia implies that keeping the flaps extended is critical in the MU-2:
A design feature of the MU-2 is its high cruise speed while having a low landing speed. This is accomplished by using full-span, double-slotted flaps on the trailing edge of the wing. These flaps give the MU-2 a wing area comparable to a Beech King Air in landing configuration while having a wing area comparable to a light jet while in cruise mode. The full-span flaps meant that over-wing spoilers were employed instead of conventional ailerons. These spoilers are highly effective, even when the MU-2 wing is stalled. Some fatal accidents have occurred because normal engine-out procedures for light twin aircraft are not effective when flying the MU-2. The commonly taught procedure of reducing flap following an engine failure on take off leads to a critical reduction in lift in the MU-2 due to the highly effective double-slotted flaps. When pilots were taught to retain take-off flap and to reduce climb rate in the event of an engine failure, MU-2 accident rates reduced to almost nil.
Anon 10:07 – note that Mitsubishi, the maker of the plane, was not named in the suit, only Honeywell, the maker of the engine. The General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 generally precludes liability for aircraft (and parts) more than 18 years old. Honeywell was not protected because the engines on the plane were less than 18 yrs. old, I’m guessing.
The insurance that Dr. Inhofe carried and whether he broke its terms is irrelevant. The plaintiffs are not suing his insurers, they are suing Honeywell.
Kourt – the single engine landing procedure is somewhat different:
“…, a gear up, flaps 5˚, 140 knot configuration is maintained until the runway is in sight and a normal glidepath can be maintained to touchdown, at which point, with landing assured, the gear are extended, the flaps lowered to 20˚, and a slow deceleration to threshold speed is begun. Gear and flap extension can easily be accomplished as low as 400 feet above the ground. ”
http://mu-2aircraft.com/upload/news/NsImgPdf_82.pdf
Izzie: The change that you cite doesn’t change what is possible, only suggests a better-than-original way to do it. The old procedure would have been demonstrated to work or it wouldn’t have been in the owner’s manual (“Pilot’s Operating Handbook” or “Airplane Flight Manual”). The MU-2 will fly a lot better on one engine than any piston twin, that’s for sure!
And yet Dr. Inhofe was a very experienced multi-engine pilot, including I assume a lot of (simulator) practice on single engine operation. So there must have been something about the unfamiliar nature of the MU-2 that got him into trouble.
It sounds to me that because of its somewhat unusual use of spoilers and full length flaps instead of ailerons, the plane behaves a little differently than most planes and that you can get in a lot of trouble if you try to fly it in the way that you are used to doing – it’s not that the MU-2 is worse than a piston twin, it’s just different. And that many pilots, when suddenly confronted with a novel situation in an unfamiliar aircraft and with possibly only seconds to react, may forget their (minimal) training for the type and revert to their usual MO more or less out of muscle memory, which when applied to the MU-2 can lead to disaster.
And that they must have changed the AFM for a reason (the reason being the high # of MU-2’s that have crashed) so that the original procedure didn’t work under certain conditions or maybe in the hands of someone who was not highly familiar with the aircraft. I’m sure that if you were a skilled test pilot with hundreds of hours on the MU-2 and you followed the procedure in the original AFM you could land the plane on one engine (which is how the procedure made it to the AFM and the aircraft got certified to begin with) but a lot of real world pilots were not quite up to it.
I’m pretty sure the accident record of the plane has improved dramatically since the SFAR went into effect. One thing I remember being told is that in single engine operation, you don’t want to use the wheel to keep the wings level – the spoilers kill too much needed lift. Instead, you’re supposed to use use the trim control, which activates small trim ailerons at the end of the wings. These are details an experienced jet pilot would know, but a pilot/owner stepping up to an MU-2 from a light twin or a Malibu wouldn’t be familiar with.
I have been a pilot for almost 40 years and I have had discussions like the one subject of this posting countless times. In my opinion, the key to understand airplane performance is to focus on the fundamentals of the design. The MU-2 and the Piper Cub have an almost identical wing area (178 sf2). The MU-2 is a much heavier airplane (the Piper weights just 765 lbs empty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_J-3_Cub).
The MU-2 flies because it has much more powerful engines. When only 1/2 of the power is available a MU-2 is in trouble. It is that simple. “A bird flies by mathematical principles” Leonardo da Vinci, Sul Volo deli Uccelli, 1505 (as quoted by Henk Tennekes in his great book “The Simple Science of Flight”, one of the best books ever on the subject of flying).
Anon: http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2011/May/1/Mitsubishi-MU-2-Addictive-performance says that the MU-2 will climb at 550 feet per minute at sea level on a single engine. http://www.aopa.org/Pilot-Resources/Aircraft-Ownership/Aircraft-Fact-Sheets/Piper-Super-Cub says that the original Cub climbed at 450 fpm. So an MU-2 with one engine shut down should be able to handle any flight that an original Piper Cub can handle, albeit with clumsier handling.
It appears that almost every twin engine propeller aircraft is “in trouble” as soon as one engine quits, especially during take-off or landing. You have lost half the expected power, you have asymmetrical thrust, you have drag from the stationary prop, etc. It’s an inherently serious situation, but rarely is it unrecoverable IF you react quickly and properly. As Phil pointed out, the plane could not be certified unless it can be shown that the plane remains flyable on one engine. The problem is that not every pilot has the skills to pull it off and less than flawless execution can result in disaster in a matter of seconds when you are that close to the ground – you don’t get a second chance. A lot of times a plane can almost fly itself but this is not one of those times.
Even with one engine, the MU-2 has a LOT of power – Inhofe’s plane had 750 shaft horsepower per engine. The J-3 gets by on 65hp total. I haven’t done the math but I think that even with one engine the MU-3 has an equal or better power to weight ratio, so that’s not the problem. Pilots who are coming from jets seem to have little problem handling the MU-2 because they are are used to flying aircraft with high wing loading.
According to the report, http://aviationweek.com/bca/oklahoma-mu-2b-accident-mishandled-engine-out, it appears that the inexperienced pilot actually REDUCED power on his remaining engine in order to try to deal with the asymmetrical thrust but this put him periously close to (and eventually under) his minimum control speed. So his problem was NOT that he didn’t have enough power from his remaining engine, it was that he didn’t know how to manage the power that he had.
Of course (if handled correctly) a twin is still better than a single engine plane where you have zero power once the engine quits.
It’s also worth pointing out that the Garrett (later Honeywell) engines are extremely reliable so that real world one engine events are thankfully rare.
Philg: you are absolutely right. Perhaps Da Vinci could have said that airplanes fly by mathematical principles and pilot skill. Pilots used to solo Piper Cubs with seven hours of training. A MU-2 outperforms a Piper Cub only when flown by a very, very competent pilot.
“The USAF uses contract pilots in MU-2’s down here ….”
I worked directly with that contract re-award when I was on an HQ staff in the Air Force about 20 years ago. At that time we’d been operating the MU-2s for something like ten years before I came on the scene. The core requirement for that contract is a cheap airplane that can go 250 knots.
At that time we had never lost an MU-2, although we had one big scare when one threw a prop blade into the fuselage in flight.
The MU-2 was also operated by F-117 pilots back when the F-111 was a black program.
I’ve never heard of an Air Force MU-2 loss, if someone can provide a link or approximate date of the accident I’d be very interested.
I’m pretty sure the US is the only country that does not require a formal type rating for the MU-2. In this country the MU-2 used to have a horrible accident rate until the manufacturer, operators, and the FAA came up with a formal training program for MU-2 pilots. The safety record of those graduates is comparable with other GA turboprops.
The airplane is weird in a lot of ways, not the least of which is a tiny wing with only spoilers for roll control.
Here is a letter from an MU-2 fan, though one who is not unbiased (he is a broker). https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/small_airplanes/cos/mu2_foia/acs_responses/media/acs86_95.pdf
He says that you can’t fly it like a Beechcraft and the key to single engine operation is to trim the aircraft. I don’t recall what position they found the trim tabs in after the crash but if I had to guess, Inhofe probably failed to trim it sufficiently (if at all) and tried to correct it with the spoilers, which cut his air speed even more (not to mention leaving the flaps and gear down ). Usually fatal accidents are the result of multiple failures piled on top of each other and this seems to fit the pattern. Sometimes the cherries in the slot machine of life all line up, but in a bad way.
Jim, here is a a US Navy MU-2 crash:
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-06-17/local/me-4070_1_edwards-air-force-base
And, it looks like the Navy was sued and lost
http://vastanoangarella.com/case/4
“Jim, here is a a US Navy MU-2 crash”. Well it is a tricky airplane, I’m sorry the Navy lost one.
I’m pretty sure the USAF MU-2’s in Florida have a great safety record.
Oh, in my post above delete F-111 and substitute F-117.
The F-111 was a lot of things, but was never in the black.
Anon: Thanks for the link to that 1993 crash, especially to the law firm’s site. It provides another awesome example of why you should never sell anything to an American. A guy is flying around in severe clear weather in the desert. He’s heading for an airport with a 15,000′ runway (i.e., one of the biggest airports in the world and therefore theoretically easy to spot). A piece of radio gear that one would use in instrument conditions (but not as the sole means of establishing position) was potentially unreliable. The plane is trailing after a fast-moving F-16 that generates wake turbulence. About 50 seconds after a close encounter with the F-16, the MU-2 crashes. (See http://articles.latimes.com/1993-06-17/local/me-4070_1_edwards-air-force-base ). The company that was maintaining the MU-2, which may very well have been functioning perfectly until it collided with the ground, was hit by a jury for $21.4 million.
You’ll be pleased to know that they only had to pay less than 1/2 of that:
http://openjurist.org/156/f3d/952/herbert-desrosiers-v-flight-international-of-florida-inc#fn3
The argument was that the DME was not working properly (but had not been stickered) and that this is what caused the pilot to end up in the F-16’s wake.
Jim Howard,
I need to walk back my comment about the USAF losses, I was confusing them with a cluster of clviilan crashes in Florida, including one in DeFuniak Springs near EgIlin AFB, just before the revised training was announced. After reading the comments, I concede the MU-2 is airworthy in the right hands, but I won’t be flying in one.
Don: I landed a helicopter some years ago at http://www.airnav.com/airport/2N2, an airport in Bristol, New Hampshire with a 1900′ runway (i.e., too short for the four-seat single-engine prop planes that I fly, at least with what I would consider to be adequate safety margins). What did we find after we shut down? A Mitsubishi MU-2 corporate aircraft… more or less based there (we were told). The runway is 40′ wide.
When I went to airnav to verify this airport I saw that it was just 1900′ long and doubted my memory. I had been thinking it was maybe 2300′. At 1900′ nobody could be that good a pilot, right? But then I did a Google search and found a letter from a corporate pilot of “JPS Industries” based in Bristol, New Hampshire regarding FAA MU-2 regulatory actions. http://mu-2aircraft.com/upload/news/MU2News_51.pdf says “grass strips as short as 2,000 feet are not out of the question at lighter weights.”
So basically you’re talking about an airplane that flies at very light jet speeds and yet can operate consistently from a 1900′ runway. That could be considered an engineering success!
(That said, I wouldn’t want to own or operate an MU-2. They are supposedly super noisy inside (maybe not as bad with the 5-blade MT props?) and are 30-40 years old.)
I thought that because of the continuous and rigorous nature of aircraft maintenance that it was OK to buy older planes. Is this not true? As has been mentioned, the Honeywell engines appear to be super reliable despite the aged design (maybe even because of the well proven design). Everyone appears to admire the workmanship (if not the handling characteristics) of the plane and Mitsubishi still supports it. The steam gauge style cockpit is outdated but I understand that it can be updated to some extent.
Izzie: I would say that recently overhauled engines in an older airplane, especially ones that are still in production like those on an MU-2, can be just as reliable as those on a new airplane. And http://www.air1st.com/around-the-word-n50et/rtw-archived-blog.html is a story about a squawk-free 101.5 hours in a refurbished MU-2. But my friends who have operated complicated airplanes that are older seem to spend a lot of time chasing little problems. Remember that the old plane is packed with wiring that can develop intermittent connections, etc. Maybe something like an old King Air with overhauled PT-6 engines and a Garmin G1000 replacement flight deck (replaces all of the old fuel and engine gauges) could be as reliable as a new King Air. Or a very simple airplane like an old Cessna 172 that has had an entirely new instrument panel and a factory remanufactured engine. But your typical old airplane has at least some important stuff that is as old as the airplane, e.g., the wiring from the fuel tank sensors to the gauges.
I could see both sides of this. Given that safety is so critical in an airplane, you wouldn’t want to endanger yourself and your family with an aircraft that was less reliable than an available alternative. Even stupid things like incorrect fuel gauge readings can sometimes lead to tragedy. Then again, for most buyers, an MU-2 is not competing against a new King Air simply because they don’t have the money to buy a King Air. So instead of the MU-2 they are maybe going to buy a piston twin or even a single that is inherently less reliable than a twin turboprop despite being newer. Not to mention that the MU-2 is much faster, more powerful, etc. which (depending on how you use that power) can either add to or detract from safety (just the fact that you get there faster means that you are up in the air for fewer hours).
The MU-2 sounds like a somewhat undervalued aircraft because of its bad reputation, which is really somewhat undeserved. It really is a dangerous and unforgiving airplane in the hands of an inexperienced or overconfident pilot, but it appears that if you put in the time to learn it and be mentored and are willing to fly it by the book and not as if it were some other airplane, it is quite reliable.
Izzie: I wasn’t talking about a failure that could “lead to tragedy.” I was talking about failures that mean you can’t fly a trip that you’d planned (spurious caution light illuminates before you take off, e.g.), that mean you have to go back and forth frequently to an airport with a specialized MU-2 service center, etc. If you have a little Cessna or Cirrus you can get service almost anywhere. With a complicated plane like an MU-2 there is probably only one shop per region of the U.S. where they’d be able to deal with it. So getting a small problem fixed will require at least half a day or a day of the owner-pilot’s time.