246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

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dgger
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246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by dgger »

For some time I have been critizing the complete and utter lack of trustworthy and meaningful accident data for Diamond aircraft. Unlike its U.S.-based competitors a very significant part, if not the majority, of Diamonds aircraft do not fly under FAA oversight and incident/accident reporting (as so far as it is actually happening) is going to the local authorities where the incident happend, as well the state of register and the state of manufacture - in the latter case to the Austrian "Verkehrsministerium".

Now, in the U.S. such data, were it not already published, could likely be retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act. However, no such law exists in Austria. Quite the contrary: By law any agency is required to guard any such data as a secret. As a result no accident or incident data is available to interested parties and prospects to sift through on their quest for an informed opinion.

However, it would appear the art of leaking data has made it to Austria:

https://kurier.at/chronik/oesterreich/2 ... 82.802.150 (in German)

While 246 lost engines and 30 deaths sound very significant (to put it mildly) we should not forget that a significant number of hours have been flown. I hope that meaningful data comes to light. Ideally, Diamond seizes the opportunity to come around, finally grows up and ultimately supports a fair comparision of the safety record of their products with those of their competitors.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by Thomas »

Peter, keep in mind that this newspaper story (Kurier Austria) is based on the Thielert (Conti) and Austro powered Diamonds, and mainly on DA40s. I only know of one dual failure on a DA42, which was after a departure with a discharged main battery - and a voltage drop following a dual ECU/Engine during gear up. (no fatalies). Since that accident, there is a back up battery for the ECUs. So Mr. Dries is possible right with the Pilots failure statement for the DA42 engine failures. That’s the reason I personally prefer and fly a Lycoming DA40 :) ... even with 11.- USD/Gal here in Europe.
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Home Airport LSZC Buochs Switzerland
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by dgger »

Thomas,

my main concern is that we don't know, how reliably and "safe" Diamond Aircraft are (by whatever metric). You being aware of a sole dual engine failure does not give us a lower bound here. I am aware of 12 fatal accidents in DA42s and in most cases do not know specifics.

Blaming it on pilots (like in case of the Speyer accident you had mentioned) is a cheap way out, when Diamond could easily engage in an open discussion and resolve concerns once an for all.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by pietromarx »

I looked at the ASN database referenced in the piece and did a search for all Diamond-related accidents/incidents. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/db ... mit=Submit

The results were 230 records with 94 fatalities. I did a quick pivot table without any real analysis and it looks like there are the following distribution of fatalities (not accidents or fatal accidents):

21 in DA20s
19 in Lycoming DA40s
21 in TDI DA40s
26 in DA42s
7 in HK36's

Maybe somebody knows the fleet sizes per model?

Who knows where the journalists are getting their differing information. It looks like 47 deaths in TDIs total across DA-40D's and DA42s, or about half of all fatalities across all of Diamond's aircraft. I didn't try and figure out whether engine failure was reported, what the fatality vs. non-fatal ratio is, etc. I'm sure the insurers do this, though.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by pietromarx »

Oh - and to be clear to our European and other international friends - the US publishes all accidents and have for many, many years. Simply go to the NTSB website and you can pull every accident reported to them in the US and by other nations. The detail provided by other nations is, not surprisingly, less than what is provided by the US.

Hard to argue with open data.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by rwtucker »

Nice work Peter. Diamond should be able to provide fleet size. If not, I suppose serial number is a proxy metric that can be adjusted for aircraft no longer with us, etc.

I second your observation on US open data. Sometimes I take it for granted. While we sometimes suggest better ways for the FAA and NTSB to capture and analyze data, I have found that they will send you the raw data if you ask. They should be able to provide the US fleet size. In some ways, this US data would be more useful for extrapolation because we can index it with NTSB to control for SOB confounding, and classify the probable cause of the accident. There are some grey areas where pilots get blamed perhaps unnecessarily but overall, we should be able to get close.

I have to say that I am surprised to see 19 Lycoming fatalities. Even assuming two SOB per accident, that is still more than I expected. On the other hand, of the first two US accidents I looked at one was clearly a stupid pilot trick and one was an engine failure.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by rwtucker »

Anyone know what "cables and plugs" the Kurier article is referring to?
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by pietromarx »

I have to say that I am surprised to see 19 Lycoming fatalities. Even assuming two SOB per accident, that is still more than I expected. On the other hand, of the first two US accidents I looked at one was clearly a stupid pilot trick and one was an engine failure.
I looked through all of the DA-40 Lycoming accidents with fatalities and couldn't find any that were engine-related. They seemed to parse into a few "dumb" mistakes, a few IFR / fatigue possibilities, and a bunch of training ones.

Do you have a reference on the engine failure one you mention? Either NTSB or ASN?

Thanks
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by pietromarx »

OK - the OCD part of my brain had me spend a few more minutes looking at this and I pulled the data from GAMA on manufacturer shipments. Adding up the airplanes delivered from 2001 through 2016:

626 DA20s (certainly underestimating the market size since there were DA20s before 2001)
1935 DA40s (not broken out by TDI or Lycoming)
855 DA42s
32 DA62s
31 HK36s (probably very underestimating the market size)

This roughly translates to the following fatal accidents per fleet:

14 DA20s of 626 were in fatal accidents, or a rate of 2.2% -- very likely not accurate as the fleet count is very off
23 DA40s of 1935 airplanes were in fatal accidents, or a rate of 1.2% -- not broken out by TDI or Lycoming
12 DA42s of 855 airplanes were in fatal accidents, or a rate of 1.4%
5 HK36s of 31 airplanes were in fatal accidents, or a rate of 16.1% -- very likely not accurate as the fleet count is most likely off!

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.
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Re: 246 Engine Outages, 30 Deaths?

Post by rwtucker »

pietromarx wrote:Do you have a reference on the engine failure one you mention? Either NTSB or ASN?Thanks
That is my mistake. I was looking at Lake Arrowhead, near Waleska and Canton, Georgia and slipped a row on the fatalities column. There are a few that suggest an engine might have been in play but no way to be certain at this point.
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