(just a side note...please leave any personal messages to myself or my family out of the actual thread. feel free to PM me anything, anytime.)
I don't believe anybody in this thread has addressed you, or your family. However, everyone has said the same thing, and you're still not listening.
There's nothing wrong with the airplane. There's something wrong with the pilot pool, and those who fly it.
It's a training issue, and a pilot issue.
The issue of a potential SFAR has already been raised; it's one possible soloution, though I think it's hardly necessary.
The problem lies in the pilots flying the airplane. It's a demanding airplane when things go wrong, counterbalanced with a highly performing airplane when things go right. That's the tradeoff, and a lot of aircraft have made that tradeoff. Anybody can fly the machine when it's working; not everyone does well when things are not working.
Pilots who blast off into low and zero conditions do so understanding that they may have to attempt to return with an engine out under those same conditions...when perhaps they should refuse to go. A pilot judgement issue, one perhaps best addressed through adequate training.
Today, many operators offer sim based training only because their insurance rates are lower with it, or because insurance demands that it be done. In many cases, their effort is only one trip to the sim a year, or in other cases, only an initial training is offered...which very often isn't even the initial course, but the recurrent course to save money.
I've worked at places where the pilots demanded more training, and proper training. We belowed long enough that we got it. It can be done, but again, this is a pilot issue, not the airplane issue. At one employer, the company check airman and chief pilot had some very skewed and dangerous views about the capability of the airplane. I flew with him and intentionally pushed him hard enough and scared him enough that he recanted and sent everybody to type specific sim based training. That's what it took. I knew that if people undertook his training program and were released only on the strength of his incompetent checkride, then we'd be seeing fatalities. Refuse to go until the proper training is provided.
Even when the proper training is provided, there's no gaurantee that it's received. Low experience pilots, despite having good training given them, have nothing to fall back upon aside from that short bit of training, when things come unbuttoned. Therein lies a big chunk of the problem. The MU-2 is an economy airplane, purchased because it's fast, economical, and inexpensive relatively to purchase and operate...largely for freight operations these days. Such positions, looking for economy, are not paying the wages necesary to attract experienced pilots.
Accordingly, the pilot pool in many cases, flying these airplanes, isn't vastly experienced, and has only the training offered them as the basis upon which to act. If a pilot flies for American Check Transport and graduates from the Navajo to the MU-2, he may attempt to use Navajo engine-out techniques and flying practices transferred to the mitsubishi. This may be a fatal mistake. A more appropriate transfer would be a pilot coming from a turbojet airplane...some of the discussion on the other thread on this subject bear that out.
Most airplanes don't begin to become familiar, and pilots don't begin to be worth ten cents in the airplane, until they've got five or six hundred hours in type. That's five or six hundred hours before the airplane starts to become a second skin, and five or six hundred hours of time between training being given, and properly kicking in and being fully applied. Take an inexperienced piston pilot, put them in the MU-2, and regardless of the training, and don't expect miracles, especially when things go wrong.
There's nothing wrong with the airplane, but the wrong pilots are being put in the airplane in many cases. Many of them do a stellar job of flying the airplane, some get flown by the airplane, and some are unfortunate enough to be overwhelmed by the "dark" side of the airplane. Even so, putting the "wrong pilots" in the airplane can still be accomplished successfully if adequate and frequent training is given.
Quality of training is a key issue. Frequency of training is a key issue. Once a year in the simulator isn't adequate. I submit that for certain aircraft, and the MU-2 may well qualify as such an airplane, twice a year isn't really adequate, either. Frequent in-house training, company mandated reviews, frequent checks and close oversight are all methods of improving crew's abilities to respond in situations that may demand all their attention.
Operational practices that involve downloading instead of trying to haul out at gross weight may be prudent, especially in areas where performance is a factor, especially in areas where dragging in at max power only creates bigger control issues. Much better to have a performance and power margin remaining by downloading and flying lighter...an operational issue for the various operators, and a pilot issue for the pilots who must decide how much they're willing to carry.
I see this a lot...pilots flying turbine equipment that believe they have been trained well enough and know the equipment well enough that they don't do performance calculations for every takeoff, every landing. Doing this, then backing off by a margin, is another step toward safer operations.
A great deal can be done to improve operational reliability with greater maintenance oversight, reduced inspection intervals, more detailed inspection programs, greater efforts and trend monitoring, analysis, etc, and greater accountability for the crews that fly the airplanes. We recently lost an airplane in whch the garret engine grenaded due to a combination of several factors which cannot be addressed presently. What can be said is that other pilots flying the airplane, doing heaven knows what to it, leaves some room for doubt in the pilot's mind flying it now...greater oversight, more frequent component and hot section inspections, etc, all go toward safety.
I flew and maintained an airplane years ago that had high tire wear, due to it's design. I began rotating the tires, a laborous task, every ten landings. The result was lower operating cost...I was on salary so the maintenance didn't cost more, but at four hundred fifty dollars a tire, we extended the life of the tires ten fold by the rotations. I began boroscoping the hot section every ten hours, due to the operating conditions and some prior history on the airplane. As a result, I split the engine and did hot section work on a couple of occasons that saved an engine failure, and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
These acts meant that money not wasted on dangerous failures and expensive repairs could be used toward more training. When I started, I underwent a private training program which I found to be questionable and undesirable. Inadequate. I demanded, and received, a higher level of training, and saw the company set up on that program. I demanded proper maintenance training for the airplane, and received it. It's a whole-picture soloution. Merely sending a pilot through a recurrent course in a simulator or taking an extra checkride now and again isn't enough.
While some of these changes may be mandated to certificate holders such as a Part 135 operator, Part 91 operators have far fewer controls.
If you're looking for changes from the FAA, don't expect big changes to occur when the fatalities that happen are largely single pilot operations carrying only freight. Not enough public drama...for the same reason that a crop duster crashing seldom brings much swift action, though it may be warranted. For such cases, largely the impetus for change must come from the manufacturer, and you're not likely to see that happen. Failing that, then the push for change is generally powered by the insurance companies, and that's always strictly an economical issue...it always comes back to economics.
Offer better training, more frequent flight and maintenance training, a better inspection program, and a proof model that it's really working, and you've got something. Until then, you've got conjecture and speculation, and a pool of pilots who get killed not because the airplane is dangerous, but because they lack the training and preparation to make the decisions that will prevent an unacceptable outcome.
