We’ll skip through the cliches about the second engine on a twin getting you to the scene of the crash when the first fails and proceed straight to the bottom line: When it’s you and the ones you care about up there, at night, over mountains or water, a piston twin may just be the safest, most capable airplane available for the flying you do if you have a substantial flying budget, but not one that allows you entrance into the turbine world.
Notice that we said “may.” There are a lot of variables that go into the decision to buy a piston twin instead of a single. We’ll go through them in some detail and then give a thumbnail sketch of the piston twins on the market and our thoughts on them.
First, the conclusion: If you are in the market for an airplane, it is unlikely that the right airplane for you is a piston twin instead of a piston single.
Ownership Conditions
Yes, we hear you. You’re different. Your flying mission requirements call for a piston twin rather than a single; you are honestly willing to take serious recurrent training twice a year and will never fly the airplane over gross and out of CG.
We know for a fact that there are a lot of pilots willing to live under those pretty simple conditions who are happily traveling around the country in piston twins. They did their homework, decided on the type that fit their needs, learned all they could about the airplane—including joining the type club—had a careful, detailed prebuy exam performed, got a solid checkout and are taking recurrent training—and are willing to pay a great deal of money to operate the airplane.
If you’ve got the budget to deal with operating costs that start at $400 an hour—and move north with alacrity—and want the ability to travel significant distances with good dispatch reliability and the ability to deal with most weather, a piston twin may be just exactly the airplane for you.
Nevertheless, we doubt it.
Yet, to be fair, we’ll take a hard look at what should go into the decision to buy a piston twin over a single and then what’s out there and what might be right for you.
In the process of researching this piece we interviewed a dozen or so piston twin owners and looked back at our experience owning a piston twin—and we’ll note right here that if the cost hadn’t escalated beyond our ability to own one, we’d still have one because it was just the right airplane for the flying we were doing.
Insurance
If you want a piston twin, insurance must be front and center in your thinking. Aviation insurance broker Mike Pratt’s first comment to us when we asked him about buying a first piston twin was unequivocal: “Piston twins are very hard to insure. Be prepared for a number of training requirements and a high premium.”
In further conversation he told us that it’s going to be tough to get insurance unless you have significant piston twin experience and time in type. He recognized the Catch-22—it’s hard to get time in type unless you own one and you can’t get insurance if you don’t have time in type first.
Pratt told us that the pilot’s age will be a factor—if you’re stepping up from a less capable airplane, do it before you turn 70, otherwise you can’t get coverage. The type of twin matters as well—some insurers won’t touch some types, especially older ones built in small quantities and ones where it is difficult to find specialized initial and recurrent training.
Finally, Pratt recommended staying away from twins built in small numbers and/or that are quite old as parts can be hard to get, driving up the cost of repairs and driving down the interest of insurers in insuring them. As an example Pratt told us that if you want to step into a Beech Queen Air, be prepared for no company to be willing to insure you or being able to get only liability insurance, not hull. He also pointed to the Aerostar and Twin Comanche series as being challenging to insure.
Our recommendation: We’re in a hard insurance market—make absolutely certain that you can get coverage before you make an offer on a piston twin. We heard reports from two different brokers of clients who made deposits on airplanes and then found out they couldn’t get insurance. They proved to be expensive mistakes.
Your mission
This is where you take a detailed look at the flying you want/need to do and match the airplane to it.
In keeping with our practice of giving the conclusion first we’ll say that unless your mission calls being able to fly at night, in weather, at altitude, potentially dealing with ice, routinely going at least 500 miles, and over high terrain and/or water, a piston twin is probably not the right airplane for you. If that is your mission requirement, one of the heavier piston twins such as a Cessna 340, 414, 421, Beech Baron series, later Piper Seneca, Piper Navajo or an Aerostar will fit the bill. Otherwise, you’re better off with a high-performance piston single, notably a Cirrus (we like the parachute for safety over terrain more than a second engine), Piper Malibu/Mirage, Matrix, Saratoga, Beech Bonanza series or Cessna 210 series. The T210 has a better payload and longer CG range than most of the piston twins.
For Dr. Brent Blue, based in Jackson, Wyoming, and facing MEAs of 16,000 feet going east and 14,000 feet going west, and regularly making long trips, the Cessna 340 with its turbocharging, pressurization and known icing was the right airplane for him.
However, when the need to be able to go in most weather went away, he sold the 340 and now primarily flies his Cessna 185.
Dr. Jay Apt lives on the windward side of the Allegheny mountains where ice is the order of the day.
After picking up an uncomfortable accumulation in his Bonanza and regularly flying long distances with a growing family, he bought a Beech 18.
He flew it and his family to Central America, the West Coast of the U.S. and Hudson Bay. The combination of deicing boots and alcohol windshield (less expensive and more reliable than a hot windshield) gave him affordable ice protection and the fact that freight operators were still running 18s meant parts were easily available.
Having had a finicky prebuy exam performed by a Beech 18 expert, he got one in good shape and never faced annual maintenance costs higher than he had in his Bonanza. He noted to us that he also did as much work on the airplane under his A&P’s supervision as he could—and that his A&P, Dennis Handley, was an expert in 18s. Doing as much work on their twins as they could was a common comment we heard from twin owners.
The combination of kids going to college and fuel prices caused Apt to sell his twin and return to Bonanza ownership and canceling more trips due to weather.
Useful Load
One of the most important elements in meeting a pilot’s mission requirement is useful load.
In general, a twin will have more useful load than a comparable single but will almost always use it up in carrying fuel. The real issue is payload—how much can you put in the cabin once you have sufficient fuel aboard for the trips you want to make? When we’ve run the numbers, most of the time singles have a better payload than light and medium twins. It’s only when you get to the heavy twins such as 400-series Cessnas and the Piper Navajo line where the payload line crosses into an advantage for the twin. For example, a stock Cessna 340A with all six fuel tanks filled is a two-place and community toothbrush airplane. With the installation of VGs it gets an additional 400 pounds of useful load, a mod that converts that twin from a marginal hauler to what may be the right choice for a prospective owner.
Over Gross?
We’ll make a note about gross weight right here. We recognize that a lot of single-engine pilots almost routinely fly their airplanes over gross, giving a nod and a wink to the FARs that make it illegal. They get away with it most of the time—not always. In a single, we consider over-gross operations foolish. In a twin we think flying over gross is approaching suicidal.
The reasons purely have to do with performance. With both engines operating most piston twins will climb at a rate on the order of 1,000 FPM. That’s great, and it is one of the reasons they handle weather better than singles.
However, when one engine goes away a loss of 50 percent of thrust does not result in maintaining 50 percent of the all-engine rate of climb. Climb is a function of horsepower available above that needed to maintain level flight. A twin with two 200-HP engines may require 180 HP to fly level at Vy, its best rate of climb speed. With both engines running, there are 220 horses available to pull the airplane upward. With one running, there are 20.
That’s why a twin loses about 80-90 percent of its rate of climb when one engine shells. That’s also why single-engine rates of climb for most piston twins are in the 250 FPM or less range at sea level on a standard day. Of course, once density altitude increases that rate of climb drops and soon becomes negative.
Departing even a little over gross may mean no single-engine rate of climb or a miniscule one if you do everything exactly right.
Even with book single-engine rate of climb, you’ve got to be concerned about how much altitude you will gain versus how far you travel. A 250 FPM rate of climb at 90 knots means you’ll only climb 166 feet every mile you proceed from the point that you got the airplane cleaned up and the dead engine’s prop feathered. What is the terrain and obstruction situation around your most commonly used airport? Do you really want to depart over gross? Oh, yeah, over gross is often connected with being out of CG. That means not only are you killing single-engine rate of climb, you may be causing Vmc (minimum control speed on one engine) to increase. You don’t want your last view to be through the windshield of your twin as it Vmc rolls inverted because you were holding the nose up trying to get single-engine climb performance that was never built into the airplane.
Double-check the airplane’s weight and balance paperwork to make sure it has the payload you need. We walked away from a twin purchase when the full-fuel payload proved to be much less than we expected and the airplane couldn’t carry what we needed.
Speed
The rule of thumb when looking at twin speeds versus comparable singles is that the twin is going to be 10 to 15 percent faster while burning twice as much fuel. Until you get to the larger twins such as the Aerostar series and Cessna 421, the speed delta versus a Cessna T210 or Piper Malibu isn’t dramatic for the fuel burn increase. On a 500-NM trip a 310 only beats a 210 by about 15 minutes.
Runway
We can’t think of a piston single that we wouldn’t base on a 3000-foot runway that has obstruction-free approaches.
There are few piston twins that have an accelerate-stop distance of less than 3000 feet on a standard day at sea level. For most piston twins that means if you have an engine go on holiday as you near rotation speed, you’re going off the end of a 3000-foot runway, probably while still whistling along nicely.
What’s off the end of your runways? Do you want to make the vast majority of your takeoffs trusting your life to both engines continuing to run until you get to an altitude where you have a fighting chance of continuing the flight on one engine?
Mike Busch, proprietor of Savvy Aircraft Maintenance, who has owned a Cessna T310R for over half of his life, made an interesting comment when we were talking with him: “That other engine on a twin is actively trying to kill you on every takeoff. The parachute in a Cirrus is quietly sitting there waiting to save your life.” By the way, Busch told us that if he were making an airplane buying decision today, given that he routinely makes very long trips, often across the country, he would not buy the 310 again. He would buy a Cirrus SR22—one of the round gauge models because of the price tag versus the glass panels.
Reliability
We heard comments on both sides of the issue of reliability. Mike Busch talked about the sheer number of moving parts on a twin versus a single, so dispatch reliability is bound to be lower on a twin.
We think this issue is a crapshoot and often depends on how clean the airplane was when you got it and whether you’re willing to spend the bucks for preventive maintenance and fixing small stuff before they become big stuff. However, we keep thinking about when we were regularly doing multi-engine instruction and we canceled lessons for mechanical issues far more frequently in twins than singles.
Operating Costs, prebuy
One of the axioms of aviation is that the total hourly operating cost of an airplane flown about 200 hours a year is four times the cost of the hourly fuel burn. We think that’s still a pretty good guide.
Owners told us repeatedly that the cost of operating a twin is not twice that of a comparable single, it’s three times. We don’t disagree and we think about the frustrating little things such as the times we were charged more for parking at an FBO in a twin than a single even though the twin wasn’t any bigger and didn’t weigh more.
This is a good time to recommend that you not buy a twin and get your multi-engine rating in it. That will beat up the airplane more than you really want and potentially shorten engine life and drive up your maintenance bills.
What we have said over the years about prebuy exams should be tripled for a twin because the airplane you’re considering can have a negative value. We’re not kidding. We have seen twins that wound up costing their new owners multiples of the purchase price to fix serious ills not uncovered until first annual.
There are piston twins you can buy with your credit card but that will bankrupt you trying to get them into decent shape—if you can get parts. The Cessna 411 comes immediately to mind.
An asking price well below Bluebook is always a red flag. Someone is trying to unload it. “Fresh Annual” and “Fresh Overhaul” are virtually guaranteed to be bad news when buying a twin—the annual will have been pencil-whipped and the “overhaul” wasn’t.
Never, ever have the prebuy examination done by anyone who has any connection with the seller or who has worked on the airplane previously. Have it done by an expert on the type of airplane selected by you. That also means joining whatever type club(s) there is on the airplane and learning all that you can before you go into a purchase.
What’s out There
We’ll do a quick run through of our most recent market review, noting the average price in parenthesis.
• On the light end, options range from the Beech Travel Air ($52K) and Duchess ($135K), Piper Apache ($50K), Twin Comanche ($100K) and Seminole ($115 – $800K), through the Grumman Cougar (too few for sale to price). Cruise speeds range from 120 knots to 160.
Useful loads are tight and single-engine ceilings low (except for the turbo versions). Maintenance on the old birds can be eye-watering and systems as well as Vmc behavior can be ugly. We think the Piper Arrow, Cirrus SR20 and Cessna 182RG are more utilitarian with substantially lower operating costs.
• Stepping into what we arbitrarily call the light twins there are the Beech Baron series ($100K to over a million), Piper Seneca series ($100K to over a million) and Aztec ($140K, turbos slightly less), Cessna 310 ($133K, $148K turbo) and 337 ($104K).
Here are serious traveling machines with speeds from 155 to over 200 knots but with widely varying useful loads. Operating costs are as high as the cruising speeds and some will drive you nuts with maintenance—for example, an Aztec has to be on jacks with the gear up to check the hydraulic fluid level.
Singles that come close to or match these twins for speed are the Piper retractable Saratogas, Malibu/Mirage and Matrix, Beech Bonanza series and Cessna 210 series.
• The upper level of the heap consists of cabin-class twins. They are the most expensive to operate, but generally have the most to offer in terms of speed, payload and capability, especially if pressurized. At the same time, we recommend staying far away from the manufacturers’ earliest cabin-class machines and/or pressurization due to lack of parts, rare/finicky engines and extreme difficulty in obtaining insurance.
Our use extreme caution/stay away airplanes are the Cessna 411 ($57K) and the early pressurized Navajos ($80K). We’re on the fence on the Beech Duke ($190K) because we have seen very good and awful.
The remainder are the Piper Navajo series ($220K), Cessna T303 ($145K), 340 ($180K to $285K) and 400 series ($170K-$500K) Aero Commander Twins ($150K and up) and Aerostars ($150K to $350K). These, in our opinion, are the capable twins that do what singles won’t regarding load hauling and weather. We note that the AeroCommanders are substantially larger than the competition so they won’t fit in a T-hangar and are easily 20 knots slower.
If a cabin-class twin meets your mission and you are willing to pay the freight to maintain it—and you—in excellent condition, it can’t be beat in the piston world.
Conclusion
The relatively low prices of piston twins compared to singles with comparable cruise speeds can prove so beguiling that rational thought flees a pilot’s mind. We think that the purchase of a piston twin has to be approached in a cold, calculating manner, realistically evaluating operating costs, payload, runway length requirements, insurability and the need to take serious recurrent training frequently and be willing to fly the airplane frequently to ensure that skills don’t deteriorate.
Every piston twin pilot and owner we interviewed spoke vehemently about the need for a solid checkout in the airplane, recurrent training with a knowledgeable CFI at least once, but preferably twice, a year and the need for a simulator to make training effective. Insurance brokers told us to plan on such a requirement from your insurer for any piston twin you buy. Of course we asked why.
We spent some quality time with Dr. Stan Musick who, in addition to being an Aviation Medical Examiner, is a Designated Pilot Examiner and an airshow pilot performing in a Corsair, P-51 and T-6 and has held a number of positions with the Commemorative Air Force (CAF), including chief check airman for fighters. Musick has owned a number of piston twins and currently makes extensive use of his Beech Baron.
According to Musick: “The problem is that the edge comes off quickly if you don’t fly frequently. In a twin, there are a number of flight regimes that are unforgiving and you have to know where your hands are going to go, right now! That’s a perishable skill.
“You need to be so familiar with a twin that you don’t have to use the checklist as a do list when an engine goes out. You should be able to say the engine out, identify-verify-feather drill out loud, right now, without taking a breath.
“For example, do you know precisely how you move the prop control to get the propeller into feather in the airplane you are flying? It’s not the same across the piston twin world—some controls require moving around a detent, others pulling them through a restriction,” Musick said. “You have to know and it has to be second nature.”
When we look at the 100 most recent accidents for the monthly Used Aircraft Guide, the thing that strikes us first with twins is that they are less likely to crash due to an engine stoppage than are singles. That makes sense; most of the time the pilot handles the engine out and lands safely. However, the reports that are painful to read are those where the pilot didn’t do anything—such as select a fuel tank that had fuel in it, feather the prop on the dead engine or clean up the airplane if it happened after takeoff. Those accidents were often ugly because it was not unusual for a pilot who not only hasn’t had training/recurrent training to fail to follow the most basic engine-out procedures, they often then let the speed bleed off until the airplane rolled and impacted inverted.
While twins have fewer engine-out accidents than singles, the ones that do happen tend to result in more serious injuries or death because the pilot doesn’t land the airplane right side up. Even our older airplanes have decent crashworthiness capabilities, but they have to hit right side up to take advantage of the design.
Beyond engine failures, systems are more complex in a twin and they fail or are not intuitive. We’re reminded of Twin Comanches with six tanks and lousy fuel gauges. Former astronaut Jay Apt said that when he was selecting a twin he made sure it was one that had systems that were understandable—”Nothing that I’d forget in the heat of battle. Systems knowledge needs respect, especially when flying in severe conditions, because something will go wrong and you’d better have practiced for it.” Being as Apt is the only human being ever exposed to the vacuum of space (space suit malfunction) and lived to tell about it, we listen when he talks about systems.
Your insurance company will mandate recurrent training on an annual basis—at the very least. Often it must be simulator based, which we think is wise. Doing engine-out training in the airplane is effectively practice bleeding. Too many pilots and instructors have died when it went wrong. While we can’t reduce the amount of in-airplane training to zero, we can minimize it by using simulators.
However, there’s a problem. After FlightSafety got out of piston twin simulator training there became a dearth of good training facilities. Your insurer will have a list of approved ones; however, the chances are that the sim you’ll use won’t match the panel on your airplane—welcome to the wide, weird world of custom glass flight decks.
Our suggestion—go to the training facility that can most closely duplicate your airplane and concentrate on learning systems and engine failures in all conditions—that’s where simulators shine. Then finish up with a knowledgeable CFI in your airplane. That’s going to be necessary to finish up an Instrument Proficiency Check (IPC) because you’ll have to do a circle to land approach in the airplane—the AATD and BATD sims aren’t approved for the maneuver.
We heard from a number of piston twin owners who have home flight simulators that they have configured to match their airplanes. They report that it helps them stay up to speed and often practice immediately before they are to make a flight. It sure sounds like a good idea to us.
