What is the most reliable cabin class piston powered airplane?

Fearless Tower said:
I dunno. I'll take a Baron over a Bo any day.
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Honest question. What did the Baron provide your specific mission that an E/F33 did not? Was there a mission-impacting performance gain for the fuel expenditure or was it just a personal preference for power distribution redundancy?
 
weilke said:
If you look around, there are only four cabin class twins left in commercial use:
- a couple of 421s in charter use
- Queen airs with the excalibur conversion to ship boxes
- A smattering of Chieftains
- some very senior 402s used by Cape Air etc.

Take your pick.
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Queen Airs in commercial use??? Where? I haven't seen an airworthy Queen Air in a very long time.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Honest question. What did the Baron provide your specific mission that an E/F33 did not? Was there a mission-impacting performance gain for the fuel expenditure or was it just a personal preference for power distribution redundancy?
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Greater Useful load/baggage space for a family of 4.

De-ice

Good single engine performance and the redundancy of systems (vacuum/electric) that twins offer.

At least 15kts more in cruise.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Queen Airs in commercial use??? Where? I haven't seen an airworthy Queen Air in a very long time.
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Bemidji Aviation. They have a contract for UPS to move stuff to the hub at MSP.

They also have the STC for the conversion to the IO720 engines.
 
Is the actual payload on the Baron that much better if you're carrying gas to feed the other engine? Honest question - I don't know.

And it seems to me that if I'm going to throw down for FIKI, I might as well buy a no sh** travelling machine and go pressurized while I'm at it.
 
kayoh190 said:
Is the actual payload on the Baron that much better if you're carrying gas to feed the other engine? Honest question - I don't know.
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Yes. I could carry over 1000 lbs plus 4 hrs of gas.

Total useful load of my airplane was over 1700 lbs.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Every airplane is different.

In my airplane, VMC+5 will have you overspeeding the flaps.
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That's why I said light twin. Except for maybe a few corner cases, I can't think of an entry level or even a basic flat engine, unpressurized cabin class piston twin where this would be true. ;)
 
Fearless Tower said:
Queen Airs in commercial use??? Where? I haven't seen an airworthy Queen Air in a very long time.
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Bemidji uses them. Quite common in the upper Midwest, and I think they have some in Colorado. They hold the STC for the Excalibur conversion and as far as I know, their entire fleet are Excalibur Queen Airs.

Edit: I missed Weilke's post.
 
Grum.Man said:
Cabin Class to me means pressurized. By reliable do you mean safe, or low maintenance. If safety than pressurized 337 would be my pick. If maintenance then probably a pressurized 210 or Malibu.
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I would consider a Navajo or 421 to be 'cabin class'.
 
kayoh190 said:
And it seems to me that if I'm going to throw down for FIKI, I might as well buy a no sh** travelling machine and go pressurized while I'm at it.
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Pressurization is nice, but really doesn't buy you a ton in the eastern half of the country. Depending on the wx, I'd rather have the Aztec than the 414 for some situations. Overall the 414 is better, but there are cases where the Aztec is. Each plane has its strengths and weaknesses.

I spent a couple thousand hours flying naturally aspirated piston twins, and rarely would pressurization have helped me in terms of the raw ability to get somewhere. What it does typically do is reduce fatigue and make the trip more comfortable.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I spent a couple thousand hours flying naturally aspirated piston twins, and rarely would pressurization have helped me in terms of the raw ability to get somewhere. What it does typically do is reduce fatigue and make the trip more comfortable.
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Passengers will like it. Not just for the pressurization, but they're also quieter on the inside.
 
paflyer said:
Just curious, how did you find transition training, and what did your insurer require for
"monitoring" time in type?
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Transition training (other than my infamous prop issue - wouldn't come out of feather) was pretty smooth. I didn't scare myself until my first solo.

My insurance wanted either 5 or 10 hrs of dual with 15 full stop landings before solo with a no pax restriction until I had 15 in the plane.

When I got mine I had around 900 TT with about half of that ME and about 10 hrs T-6 and 10 DC-3. The insurance company specifically wanted to know how much heavy TW time I had.
 
paflyer said:
Passengers will like it. Not just for the pressurization, but they're also quieter on the inside.
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Passengers definitely will like it. However I found the 310N to be quieter than the 340 and 414 until I put MTs on the 414 as the props were further forward on the 310. Same is true for short body Navajos, the props are really far forward.

The 421 is the quietest of all.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Pressurization is nice, but really doesn't buy you a ton in the eastern half of the country. Depending on the wx, I'd rather have the Aztec than the 414 for some situations. Overall the 414 is better, but there are cases where the Aztec is. Each plane has its strengths and weaknesses.

I spent a couple thousand hours flying naturally aspirated piston twins, and rarely would pressurization have helped me in terms of the raw ability to get somewhere. What it does typically do is reduce fatigue and make the trip more comfortable.
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I know around the Gulf, the storms get big and tall, I would need a turbine to get over them or just around them.
 
Yes, the back seats on a -310C Navajo are surprisingly quiet. Not turbine quiet, of course, but quiet enough that you can talk with only a slightly raised voice.
 
midcap said:
I know around the Gulf, the storms get big and tall, I would need a turbine to get over them or just around them.
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There will always be days where that happens, but on the whole if you have on board radar you can usually get around.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
There will always be days where that happens, but on the whole if you have on board radar you can usually get around.
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I always wondered about that...I know it comes in handy when fishing far offshore.

If the weather is just too bad, I'm lucky, worse thing that happens is I have to stay a day or two longer than what I planned. No biggie. I can get back to the office when ever I feel like it.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Queen Airs in commercial use??? Where? I haven't seen an airworthy Queen Air in a very long time.
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I flew a QueennAir Excalibur trip on Thursday. Those big IO 720s are a hoot to fly. The switches and stuff are randomly strewn around the panel. It's not particularly fast, no pressurization, noisier inside than a turbocharged plane. But it's not a bad plane.
 
midcap said:
I always wondered about that...I know it comes in handy when fishing far offshore.

If the weather is just too bad, I'm lucky, worse thing that happens is I have to stay a day or two longer than what I planned. No biggie. I can get back to the office when ever I feel like it.
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Certainly pressurization makes it easier. You can usually avoid storms visually rather than needing to use the radar.

That said, I also think there's a lot of value in cutting your teeth on planes that can't get above the weather. I see a lot of pilots make the jump early to high and fast, and miss out on good learning from low flying. Ultimately flying low is more forgiving since the storms typically have less energy at lower altitudes anyway.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Certainly pressurization makes it easier. You can usually avoid storms visually rather than needing to use the radar.

That said, I also think there's a lot of value in cutting your teeth on planes that can't get above the weather. I see a lot of pilots make the jump early to high and fast, and miss out on good learning from low flying. Ultimately flying low is more forgiving since the storms typically have less energy at lower altitudes anyway.
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I agree with this completely. My 310 time taught me a bunch about ice and storms.
 
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ZeroPapaGolf said:
Turbine, so it sucks fuel down low, and unpressurized, so you're uncomfortable at efficient altitudes. The worst of both worlds.
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Cessna has certainly sold its share of Caravans.

The folks who have the turbine bonanzas swear by them. It's a compromise, in that case one that involves wearing a mask in cruise.
 
weilke said:
Cessna has certainly sold its share of Caravans.

The folks who have the turbine bonanzas swear by them. It's a compromise, in that case one that involves wearing a mask in cruise.
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The Caravan is popular because it's an oversized 182. When you look at the scale factor it's about as efficient. Much different from a turbine Bonanza where you've still got the size of the 182 with fuel burn similar to the Caravan for the same altitude.

But like you said, it's a compromise, and one that obviously has a market, albeit a small one.
 
The performance of the turbine bonanza is really interesting. I do like turbine engines, but in the Bo, doesn't seem to work out so well. You are really talking similar performance to a piston Malibu, but the Malibu will carry more farther at about the same speed, and practically flies higher since with pressurization you can safely use the flight levels.

If you do like turbine conversions, the Rocket engineering conversion of the Malibu or Mirage (Jetprop) is one that is really interesting. Seems to have a cult following, Pressurized, 260 KTAS, FL270 with a pressure differential in the cabin 5.5 to comfortably use those high altitudes.

I had to go back to the original post, I guess this thread was started about piston powered cabin class aircraft that weren't pressurized. Most reliable? My picks is for the Matrix. Newer airframe, first units in 2007, one engine to keep it simple, all parts are still in production and easy to get.
 
FedEx operates 238 Caravans. They must like the useful load + reliability. I'm sure the leg length into the nearest regional hub is typically not that long.


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They are also used extensively in the north on wheels or amphibs
 
There used to be one on floats at SNA - that was one *tall* airplane!
 
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