246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

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reinhardj
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by reinhardj »

The first reference was to an Austrian newspaper on a subject from 2007. All Diamond pilots at least in Europe know, that the early 1.7l Centurion had a lot of problems, which in the end resulted in the insolvency of Thielert.
Nevertheless, after introduction of the 2.0l motor, the reliability increased significantly and since than the reliability of this motor is better than other motors, at least as stated by Continental motors.....
http://continentaldiesel.com/typo3/inde ... ID=178&L=1
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by CFIDave »

pietromarx wrote:It would be most useful to know the number of Lycoming DA40s vs. TDI DA40s and then we can actually see the rate by engine type.
For DA40s, you might be able to look at serial number ranges to discriminate between:
- Early Austrian Lycoming DA40s: 40.006 through 40.084 (78 produced?)
- Canadian Lycoming DA40s: 40.201 and up to somewhere beyond 40.12XX (more than 1000 produced?)
- Canadian Lycoming DA40 Fixed Pitch Prop 40.FC001 through 40.FC009 (only 8 produced?)
- Austrian Thielert DA40s: D4.001 through D4.399 (399 produced?)
- Austrian Austro DA40 NGs: 40.N001 through 40.N310 (310 produced?) during 2009-2016
Note: In 2017 Canada is now producing Austro NGs as well as Lycoming XLT models.
I also saw reference to DA40s with serial 40.DS001 and through 40.DS175, so I'm not sure what these are (more Thielerts produced in China?)
You can find these serial number ranges by looking though Service Bulletins and Service Information notices.

For DA42s, you can sort by model year:
- Thielert powered: Any DA42 shipped up through 2008 (TDI models)
- Austro powered: Any DA42 shipped 2009+ (NG, -VI models)
It should be easy to use GAMA shipments by year to figure these numbers out.
(Also there were about a dozen DA42 L360 Lycoming conversions (from TDIs) by Embry-Riddle U and a few other Lycoming DA42s produced by Diamond Canada, but you could almost ignore these because the numbers are so small)
Last edited by CFIDave on Tue Aug 29, 2017 2:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by reinhardj »

I can confirm that the 40.DSXXX are produced by Bin-Ao, a joint venture of Diamond Austria in China. They still seem to use the Centurion CD-135 engines. On their web site you can still find the DA40D. http://bin-ao.com
The garmin software for these planes is by far more modern than the software available for the european DA40D (PFD/MFD 12.03, GIA 6.40). Urbe Aero has an STC to use this software in EASA registered planes.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by pietromarx »

The website for bin-ao says Centurion 2.0. Google translates it as being an "air coal" engine. I'm sure the US administration would be happy.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by pietromarx »

Here's a new swag just looking at the fatality rates per airplane by engine type. They're approximate, of course, and the fleet sizes are estimated from GAMA, SBs, and so forth.

DA40: 23 fatal accidents in a fleet of ~2159 airplanes manufactured or a rate of 1.1%/airplane.
DA40 Lycoming: 11 fatal accidents in a fleet of ~1275 or a rate of 0.9%/airplane.
DA40 TDI: 12 fatal accidents in a fleet of ~884 or a rate of 1.4%/airplane.
DA42: 12 fatal accidents in a fleet of 855 airplanes or a rate of 1.4%/airplane.

Based upon this incredibly simple analysis it seems that there is a higher rate of fatal accidents with the TDIs. A newspaper headline writer would say "fatal accidents are 60% higher in TDIs than avgas airplanes!" The reality is, of course, more subtle and beyond my ken and available time today.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by dgger »

pietromarx wrote:Based upon this incredibly simple analysis it seems that there is a higher rate of fatal accidents with the TDIs. A newspaper headline writer would say "fatal accidents are 60% higher in TDIs than avgas airplanes!" The reality is, of course, more subtle and beyond my ken and available time today.
I agree. It is not quite so simple. An analysis would need to take into account how many hours are actually flown, not just how many aircraft have been build. I once went through controller.com and the likes and came up with an estimate for the average number of hours flown per year.

But even knowing the number of aircraft built and hours flown we will not ever be able to guess a good estimate for the accident rate for the sole reason that we have no access to accident reports. The best we can do is to come up with a lower bound for safety i.e. all we will aver be able to say is: "This aircraft is no safer than X".
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by ememic99 »

The problem here is Diamond's (standard) poor customer support. Once in the past Diamond's aircrafts were advertised as the ones achieving safety records. When accidents started to happen, suddenly no official info was available, instead of providing customers (existing and potential ones) with clear statistics and reliable data. It's pathetic that even number of manufactured aircrafts must be obtained by Internet crawling techniques.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by Wilfried »

Interview with Christian Dries from Austrian newspaper that sparked the discussion about Thielert engines.
It is in German, but Google Translater might do. (Topics: reliability of Thielert engines, hybrid engines, helicopter and air-taxi plans):

https://kurier.at/chronik/niederoesterr ... 90.572.085
42.N020
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by dgger »

Interesting. Points for Mr Dries for being outspoken:

"So, there are no issues and the Authorities are wrong?

I did not put it like this. What is in the reports is not wrong. But it is not correct, either. There were indeed issues with the cabling. But the question is: Who is to blame? Cables are often damaged in maintenance. We all know, it is illegal, but the less maintenance you subject an engine to, the better (longer) it lasts. There is a flightschool in Africa, who did not do any manintenance at all and the engines lasted just fine."
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by dgger »

P.S.: Since it came up, I would like to point out that I do not share any grudges regarding DAI customer support. Your experiences might have been different, but I personally have not ever received anything, but stellar service from anyone at Diamond in either Austria, Germany or Canada. Quite the contrary. I have seen many guys bending backwards to accomodate a concern or address an issue.

I simply like to question the secrecy around incidents and accidents, which I consider unhelpul.
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