Engine fail, customer service WIN
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2018 3:05 am
Fun weekend, went to Telluride in the DA62. KTEX wasn't reporting weather, so I asked Denver Center - winds calm. Great, head up the canyon, cancel IFR. Ask CTAF for a wind check - 19G28 straight across the runway. Not what you want in that canyon. Flew the pattern to 27 since I figured it would be easier to go missed, which was likely. We got close but landing safely was clearly beyond my ability with the crazy turbulence so I cleaned up the plane and while climbing back out of the terrain I got an Left ECU A and B failure! The plane was still flying so gracefully that it took a second to connect the dots that Left was only making about 50% power. Anyway, rerouted and landed at Montrose with no issue.
Got a car to Telluride. Now for the cool part: I looked up and called the customer service number on Diamond's website, mind you this was probably around 6pm in Canada. Imagine my surprise when an actual human (Will) answered the phone, and actually knew exactly what to do. By 9pm he had arranged for one of their technicians to be in Montrose in the morning to figure it out. And he was actually there the next morning, and figured out in an hour or so that the air intake hose to the turbo was collapsing under high load. He verified this by swapping the Left and Right hose, and the problem (on the ground) moved to the right side. The Ontario crew put two new hoses on a UPS for Saturday AM delivery. Now of course UPS screwed us and didn't deliver until Monday, but they did deliver this morning, Paul put the new ones on, we did a full power test, problem solved. Flew home no issue.
Score one for Diamond customer service, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Also, score one for having two engines in the mountains. That could have been a bad scene in a single. As it was, it was pretty close to a non-event flying wise. I was super nervous of course because who knew if my partial power would last, but really a great testament to how these things handle. The old hoses are going back to the factory for a look, but the ones Paul installed were clearly beefier. Mine is 62.010 so maybe they switched suppliers or something.
Anyway, huge kudos the the fine folks at Diamond!
cheers
Jason
Got a car to Telluride. Now for the cool part: I looked up and called the customer service number on Diamond's website, mind you this was probably around 6pm in Canada. Imagine my surprise when an actual human (Will) answered the phone, and actually knew exactly what to do. By 9pm he had arranged for one of their technicians to be in Montrose in the morning to figure it out. And he was actually there the next morning, and figured out in an hour or so that the air intake hose to the turbo was collapsing under high load. He verified this by swapping the Left and Right hose, and the problem (on the ground) moved to the right side. The Ontario crew put two new hoses on a UPS for Saturday AM delivery. Now of course UPS screwed us and didn't deliver until Monday, but they did deliver this morning, Paul put the new ones on, we did a full power test, problem solved. Flew home no issue.
Score one for Diamond customer service, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Also, score one for having two engines in the mountains. That could have been a bad scene in a single. As it was, it was pretty close to a non-event flying wise. I was super nervous of course because who knew if my partial power would last, but really a great testament to how these things handle. The old hoses are going back to the factory for a look, but the ones Paul installed were clearly beefier. Mine is 62.010 so maybe they switched suppliers or something.
Anyway, huge kudos the the fine folks at Diamond!
cheers
Jason