Do what I did, get an appraisal, call your insurance company and raise your hull coverage to match it

Chuck

Wasn’t it you that said they fixed the PA-46 landing nose gear issue with the M600? Then we have 3 in a row recently? The Data seems to show they did not fix it.

Fact is the PA-46 has an issue. Sure you can do extra training and try to teach people how not to crash it but that’s a Bandaid for a larger design problem.

The rest of the fleet is paying for this design issue with higher insurance premiums. No wonder you don’t want to have your hull value raised to match replacement value. Haha

I have never had any other plane do unpredictable things on the runway like a PA46. My 501 you would have to do something really wrong to go off the side of the runway. It’s super stable as are most planes.

Mike

I did the nose gear upgrade as soon as it was available and it has .5 inch of positive castor designed into it.Before the upgrade I would hold the nose gear off at landing until it ran out of airspeed energy and then touched down and all was fine.The new nose gear with the castor is self centering and I have never had any diversion from the center of the runway at landing,I think that the upgrade is worth the cost.Early in my ownership before the upgrade I was probably too fast with allowing the nose to touch down and one time I had the airplane turn left and I raised the nose and corrected it,also beta will have a turning tendency to the left at higher speeds that the rudder can correct with full right application,this seems to all be eliminated with the updated nose gear.

Not sure I said anything about the redesigned gear, just that almost all these issues are pilot error. I have over 2000 landings in all PA46 variants and if you are a stick and rudder pilot, there is no issue. Just a plane and easier to land than a Mooney or Cirrus, both of which are also easy to land, as long as you don’t land them when they still went to fly. To my knowledge, there have been no excursions with the redesigned nose gear, it is better and came standard on the newer M600’s and all M700’s. We put one on our plane at our own expense, and definitely worth the $10,000. But I still fly Legacy M600’s in conditions that would give many the sweats flying year round in the northern Rockies and never even give it a thought on landing. You land it like any other light general aviation aircraft. On speed, main gear first, on centerline. Don’t over control it and don’t get into a pilot induced oscillation. There are 2 Cirrus excursions on average per month, almost one C172 excursion per day, yet we are talking about M600’s. Landing accidents and excursions are the number one accident afflicting light aircraft. Most just go unreported except to the insurance companies. Someone listed 3 excursions above in the last 2 years. Hardly epidemic. The fleet is pushing 1/2 million landings. That is a pretty low fraction of excursions.

I think it’s kind of interesting how PMOPA Is addressing this. Certainly education on maintaining the front nose gear. But to get the master aviator award for the PA 46 requirements to attend certain educational conferences, certain amount of experience, but then they add upset training and tail wheel training. Most PA46 accidents seem to have at their foundation the same problems that really plague all of general aviation aircraft. A big part of it starting with judgment. But the actual accident typically involves a scarcity of stick and rudder skills. I watch landings out at the airport of many aircraft types. Surprises me all the too fast landings, the bounced landings, the landings off centerline, the flare too high, the flare below ground level , and all the shenanigans. But it always eases our mind to just blame the airplane for something. Especially when it comes to a PA46. Because they are bad airplanes. Didn’t somebody here say they were built out of popsicle sticks, or was that another forum?;-). I hope to put another half million miles traveling the world in mine before I hang up my wings. No matter how awful and horrible the PA46 is.

Why do pilots not make the same errors on other comparable types?

To have those three M600 events in a relatively small fleet size does raise concerns. An underwriter would take note of that.


The nature of the excursions seems troubling for the Pipers leading to hull losses and it seemingly bites experienced pilots.

Mike C.

I don’t believe it bites experienced pilots. At least not experienced in the PA46. When they did a deep dive on this, time in type was pretty low and almost all of these accidents. I am only aware of one potential Hull loss from the landing accident. That pilot had no instrument rating, a total of 250 hours, and the flight school refused to sign them off on the aircraft and he went there and wrecked the plane on his first solo flight. I still don’t think that airplane was totaled, pretty hard to total a 3 1/2 million dollar airplane. The only hull loss I’m aware of was a P51 Mustang that taxi’d into the tail of an M600. If there is a salvage M600, I would be interested, I need a back up AI

Excursions do affect every aircraft type. It is the number one cause of accidents for airplanes of all types, including jet switch continue to find a way off the runway left right or over-run. Someone mentioned a professional pilot with thousands of hours having an excursion, turns out he was a professional helicopter pilot with very limited General aviation fixed wing experience, but that one made the circuit for a while. I assure you if you try to land a PA46 like a helicopter, it will be interesting.

One of the salvage companies, BAS, has bought at least three M600s for salvage. Here was the first one: https://baspartsales.com/blog/piper-m60 ... the-story/

In this ad is the most recent:
https://baspartsales.com/blog/new-in-th ... e=hs_email

That's a lot of hull losses for the fleet size.

The most positive thing you can say is that there is at least something to salvage after the accident.

Mike C.