Real stats on engine failures?

(Captain Wubba) wrote
Indeed. Interesting. But I'd still like to see some hard data.

Me too.

Since a big part of flying is risk
management, it would be very helpful to *really* know the risks
involved. If the odds of losing an engine are 1 in 50,000 hours, then
night/hard-IFR single-engine flying becomes a great deal more
appealing than if it is 1 in 10,000 hours.

And what if it's 1 in 1000 hours? Then night/hard-IFR single-engine
flying becomes foolhardy.

I'll try to go over the NTSB data more thoroughly, I think a
reasonable extrapolation would be that at least 1 in 4 in-flight
engine failures (probably more) would end up in the NTSB database.

That doesn't seem at all consistent with my experience. Of all my
acquaintances who have had engine failures, only one wound up in the
NTSB database because he died and took his passengers with him. One
severely damaged the airplane but walked away and contrary to
regulation never reported it. The plane was eventually rebuilt. The
others made safe landings.

Based on my experience, the it's more like 1 in 10 to 1 in 100.

Michael