310 / Aztec / Seneca II or III

[Don]

I've only flown the Senecas. The 310 is faster and more of maintainence hog I'm told. What about the Aztec, how does it compare on maintainence, performance etc...

 

[Tarzan]

I loved flying an Aztec. Typical Piper. Easy to handle and had good performance with the IO-540's on it. Once you got it cleaned up, you could maintain altitude even if you were pretty heavy. With a full load of gas and three guys (200lbs+), we could get a climb up to about 5000. Neither broke very often.

Cons are a Janitrol heater which requires quite a bit of maintainence and has to be inspected every annual. Parts are getting hard to get for them. So when they do break, it's going to cost a n arm, a leg, and probably another body part.

 

[erj-145mech]

The PA-23's are a load hauler, but you have to get it through either a smaller baggage door, into a smaller compartment, or hoist it on the wing and through the main cabin door. The turbo Aztec engines are basically the same turbo system as a Navajo, and can require some upkeep. One downsize part of the airframe is the rubber bladder fuel cells. They are a bitch to change, and a conservative life estimate is 10-12 years, if cared for.

From a passenger comfort standpoint, air conditioning is available for the PA-34's mentioned, and so is club seating. On the PA-23, the pax have to enter after climbing on the wing, and stepping over the spar center section carry though member that the front seats attach to. Pax number 5 and 6 also have to squeeze between seats 3 and 4.

All of the twins mentioned have Janitrol or Southwind heaters, so thats not really a topic that can be seperated from either type. There is an AD Note on the Aztec's heater fuel valve to check for leakage, but its not a major thing to correct.

From a maintenance standpoint, the PA-34's may be the lowest cost per hour, if the aircraft weren't abused by a previous operator.

 

[AC560]

What do you want to do with the aircraft?

 

[FN FAL]

I loved flying an Aztec. Typical Piper. Easy to handle and had good performance with the IO-540's on it. Once you got it cleaned up, you could maintain altitude even if you were pretty heavy. With a full load of gas and three guys (200lbs+), we could get a climb up to about 5000. Neither broke very often.

Cons are a Janitrol heater which requires quite a bit of maintainence and has to be inspected every annual. Parts are getting hard to get for them. So when they do break, it's going to cost a n arm, a leg, and probably another body part.

I bet I have at least 500 hours or more in Aztecs and the only bad thing I can remember about them is the heater when they don't work.

And what the other poster said about the cargo doors.

I probably have an equal amount of time in Seneca II and III aircraft and the most negative thing that stands out about them is that you sit almost on the floor to fly them, so it can be kind of a chore to get seated. You don't have much room for pilot stuff up there, so if you wind up with an up front passenger, you wind up parceling out your flight bag. Be careful what JEPS you put up in the nose locker!!!

Also, that club seating in the Seneca looks great on the sales brochure, but what you'll find out is that no one wants to ride facing back wards. So consider that in your weight and balance predictions...usually luggage in the nose locker helps out with this dilemma.

I have flown jumpers a couple of times in a Seneca with the doors off, I'm sure if there was a car like rear view mirror on the windshield center post, I would have probably caught a glimpse of 4 skeletons wearing jump gear and one wearing ray bans and David Clark's. If you can imagine Rod Serling narrating the beginning of that story, it helps with the correlation.