A Mooney pilot friend called yesterday to announce the birth of his first child, a healthy boy. It occurred to me that progress in the world of small airplanes is so slow that it is quite possible that when the child is old enough (18) to get his Commercial certificate, he will be flying a virtually identical Mooney to the ones that are being produced now, which are virtually identical to the ones produced in the 1950s. Or my friend’s 1999 Mooney could be passed down. In 2025, a 1999 plane should be younger than the average for a light piston-engined plane (the current average is more than 30 years and one FAA report predicts that the average could rise to 50 years by the year 2020).
People get nostalgic when a mechanical watch is passed down from parent to child, but as an engineer it is tough to celebrate the passing down of a 25-year-old airplane because there aren’t any better ones being produced…
The Cirrus planes are more “modern.” Do you think they are an improvement? Certainly avionics have improved. Engine technology seems stuck in the past, even for experimental planes, but there is the very real issue of whether the newest improvements are worth the reduced MTBF due to their higher complexity. It may come down to the simple fact that we have two types of practical engine, piston and turbine, and everything beyond that is bells and whistles. Thoughts?
So true, so true… We have been producing Mooney aircraft in one form or another for over 60 years. The M20A first “full production” and there are still plenty to go around. I am amazed at some of the hours on the airframes. There is an Mooney aircraft in Comptroller that has over 10,000 hours on it. It averaged out to over 250 hours per year it’s entire operating life. Most other aircraft stay average and I always wanted to compair a automobile hour usage to aircraft.
The costs and difficulty of getting an amended TC these days stops most companies from doing any real updates to their aircraft. It’s a shame, but it’s just more cost effective to just ride out 60 year-old approved designs than it is to try and build something new.
It seems that they really knew all there was to know about making things out of aluminum and rivets after the late 40’s. (at least non-pressurized things) A well-built airframe apparently can last almost forever. New (non-turbine) aircraft appear to be incremental improvements at best. It sounds like these old airplanes are probably a better deal from the point of view of people that just want to fly.
Is a breitling rescue (with a built-in emergency beacon) really all that much better than your dad’s rolex? Your grandfather’s rifle is likely as good a rifle as you could buy, at least for its intended purpose.
Computers have an advantage that planes, watches, and rifles don’t, and that’s software. Without people dreaming up new uses for them constantly, the need for more power would taper off quickly. Should innovation slow down, eventually, Moore’s law would start to run out of impetus, and this would happen to computers, too. Maybe innovation has stalled because, as you’ve pointed out in your other writings, the single engine piston aircraft is something of a dead end from the perspective of what it’s actually useful for.
I’d be thrilled if my dad gave me a Mooney.
Peter: Is the Cirrus an improvement over the Mooney? If you’re fat it certainly is! The performance numbers are almost identical. The Cirrus gives you a more spacious cabin, freedom from hassling with retractable gear, and at least as much interior noise 🙁 I think that you are right that without improvements in engines there cannot be any significant improvements in the overall airplane.
A mooney is a particularly well designed plane, even if an old design. In the 70’s Rutan tried to prove that his Long-EZ (an attempt at a revolutionary design) was more efficient/seat mile but the good old M20J still beat him. Could a new MIT educated engineer design a piston plane that could be significantly better at it’s mission than a DC-3 or B-17? I doubt it…