Turn it into a drone and sell it to the military.....

FWIW the Eclipse has been certified by EASA, Brazil,Etc..

The Eclipse fleet now has over 350,000 hours.

If it had he same fatality rate as piston twins there would be over 7 lives lost.

If it had he same fatality rate as turboprops there would be almost 6 lives lost.

If it had he same fatality rate as other jets there would be over 1 life lost.

It has proven to be a very safe airplane.

350,000 hours isnt enough time to distinguish between 0 and 1 fatalities. That midway wasnt a fatal is miraculous.

Charles,
The NTSB has a fatal rate of .32 per 100K hours for jets.

If you do the math that works out to 1.12 fatal's

What your source?

BTW you can move the throttles with your pinkie. The guy in Chicago pushed the throttles with so much force he broke the throttle quadrant.

And that has been addressed so no problem mashing the throttles now.

BTW I am a former 201,252,Bravo guy all great planes

Mustang fleet passed 1 million hours some time ago, or over 3 times as many flight hours as the Eclipse with no fatalities.

I'd be curious what your source is for the fatal accident rates you used in your computations.

Mike C.

Mike
I knew you would ask

http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/ntsb/aircraft-accident-data/ARG10-01.pdf

Pg 19

I believe that to be a lie. Sorry for the harsh language but I am tired of Eclipse advocates always trying to blame the pilot for that event.

The NTSB report said:

"When moderate forward pressure was applied to the throttle levers at the maximum power stop, engine control fail messages would appear on the CAS display. This was repeatable and demonstrated several times."

The NTSB also tested a brand new assembly and it also did the same thing so this was not from a broken throttle quadrant. Nowhere did the NTSB say the throttle quadrant was damaged.

NTSB said this was a design fault. The Eclipse religion is incompatible with that conclusion, so the pilot must be blamed somehow.

Eclipse advocates should be thanking the pilot instead for avoiding what was very nearly a fatal accident by some incredible flying.

Mike C.

From 2006, which predates Eclipse, so a bit dated. Fatal accident rates have drop some since.

Note that turboprop numbers include a lot of riskier operations (such as aerial application, bush flying, etc) that jets simply don't do. Jet numbers include two crew, which Eclipse aren't typically.

That is the fallacy with your numbers, the different kinds of aircraft are doing different kinds of missions, so the numbers are not comparable directly. Jets are safer, but not to the ratio of your numbers, when normalized for the mission and conditions.

Mike C.

I was thinking the same thing. Don't park an eclipse next to an air tractor and say, man those turboprops are death traps compared to the jet

From 2006, which predates Eclipse, so a bit dated. Fatal accident rates have drop some since.

Note that turboprop numbers include a lot of riskier operations (such as aerial application, bush flying, etc) that jets simply don't do. Jet numbers include two crew, which Eclipse aren't typically.

That is the fallacy with your numbers, the different kinds of aircraft are doing different kinds of missions, so the numbers are not comparable directly. Jets are safer, but not to the ratio of your numbers, when normalized for the mission and conditions.

Mike C.

Airplanes are very emotional purchases. The Eclipse hits all the right buttons for me, it's attractive, fun to fly, fast, comfortable, economical and really COOL! It will seduce you and make you turn a blind eye on its shortcomings.

However, it's finicky and expensive to maintain; especially if you are not hands on and drop it off at a service center for blank check maintenance. The fleet really doesn't fly very much and a quick check on the Controller of the total times of the used ones will support this view. It has actuators and probes and sensors and electronics and servos on everything and this is the stuff that breaks. The motors are solid as is the overall airframe.

I think a G2000 would fix all this airplane's shortcomings. The current company is actually doing a pretty good job fixing the shortcomings but they aren't there yet. Unfortunately, I don't think the market will support the massive re-engineering requiring to fit these with world class avionics.

Mike

That fatal rate is like the 100 year floodplain. It's an average over time. It means 10 floods over 1000 years. It doesnt mean you cant go 150 years without a flood. You should roll snake eyes 1:36 rolls. That you roll the dice 40 times and don't throw a two doesnt mean the dice are loaded. If you want to assess whether the eclipse fatal rate is more or less than 1:300,000 hours, you need a fleet total pushing 3 million hours.

Between categories like piston twin and jet, there are no good numbers because no one does a controlled study holding all the other variable the same.

It is almost always fallacious to argue about which airplane is safer as the airplane makes almost no difference. The pilot and the purpose are far more significant factors.


The incident is still part of the Eclipse history and it was a design defect.


MU2 safety record improves dramatically. What changed on the airplane? Nothing. That exposes the fallacy of assigning safety to the plane itself.


Read the NTSB factual report, under 50 lbs, for both the incident assembly and the factory new one.

http://ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/ ... 152&rpt=fa

As for most of the fleet passing that test, the pilots could perform that test themselves and if it failed, plane was grounded. You bet most would pass. Wink, wink, say no more.

Mike C.

That fatal rate is like the 100 year floodplain. It's an average over time. It means 10 floods over 1000 years. It doesnt mean you cant go 150 years without a flood. You should roll snake eyes 1:36 rolls. That you roll the dice 40 times and don't throw a two doesnt mean the dice are loaded. If you want to assess whether the eclipse fatal rate is more or less than 1:300,000 hours, you need a fleet total pushing 3 million hours.

You need about 10 events to get a good average. 1 in 300,000 is statistically weak, very low confidence, 10 in 3,000,000 is not, very high confidence.

Mike C.