There's some data in the UK that suggests abou 25 deadly accidents per
million flight hours for GA airplanes.

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx/do...90&pageid=6277


Since only a fraction of ga accidents result in death, maybe guess
25%, (maybe less than that, NTSB reports show lots of accidents and
not many deaths) it could be there are about 100 accidents for every
million hours, but only a fraction of these would be engine failure
induced, and not all engine failures result in accidents. It may very
well be on average there's an engine stoppage for every 3000 or so
operating hours on average, but so far I have not been able to get
meaningful data.

I'm hoping someone here has a URL to offer that's better than the one
I cited.


.

On May 6, 10:29*am, "Darkwing" theducksmail"AT"yahoo.com wrote:
"Tina" wrote in message

...

I've read conflicting information on how often SEL airplanes have to
land 'right now' because of engine problems. In 3000 hours, most
behind an IO 360, we never have had that kind of emergency, but have
landed because of alternater failure, having a bank of spark plugs
fail, vacuum pump failure, those sorts of things. Someone wrote, and I
don't remember if it was supported by hard data, that on average an
unavoidable unplanned landing might be as often as every 1500 hours or
so. Do you know? Information like that would allow a more reasonable
estimate of the risks associated with long overwater (or night IMC IRF
-- we do that a lot) flights.

I'm sure there are student pilots who have lost an engine on their first
solo and there are pilots with thousands of hours that have never had any
kind of emergency. Statistics are interesting reading but personal
experience varies greatly I'm sure. I'm in the low hundreds as a pilots and
haven't has any kind of emergency, I had an engine run rough for a couple
seconds in cruise and I have had a couple run ups that were rough enough to
warrant leaning the mixture and running the engine up but thankfully I have
not had anything major but I'm sure there are pilots out there with equal
hours that have had problems. It is just the luck of the draw.