What was the worst commuter aircraft YOU have flown?

[acpilot]

A Metroliner with a little green cargo company. Swear to god the damn thing was ever so slightly curved.

 

[JumpersAway]

Casa 212. I hated that airplane. I'm not sure what the Spanish do well, but making airplanes is CLEARLY not one of them.

-Flying through precipitation meant taking on water faster than the Edmund Fitzgerald.

-Water always leaked from the windows down and onto the Audio Control Panel......made you really sharp at lost comm. procedures.

-Garrett engines that you had to spin after every flight to prevent shaft bow.

-Gear didn't retract.

-HUH???!!!!!???? What'd you say??????

-Always felt like it was tipping over during refueling- the strut would suddenly compress on the fueling side and drop quickly with an unexpected fury.

-Bad Negative Torque Sensing problems that would/could drive the prop into reverse in a descent. American Eagle lost two of these in the same hole going into MIA due to this.

-Huh????? What did you say???????? I can't hear ya!

-Flew like a house, climbed like a house, would descend like a house, and looked like a house.

-The only aircraft in my aviation career that made me feel compelled to hide my face while walking away from it.

 

[airplane wizard]

Casa 212. I hated that airplane. I'm not sure what the Spanish do well, but making airplanes is CLEARLY not one of them.

-Flying through precipitation meant taking on water faster than the Edmund Fitzgerald.

-Water always leaked from the windows down and onto the Audio Control Panel......made you really sharp at lost comm. procedures.

-Garrett engines that you had to spin after every flight to prevent shaft bow.

-Gear didn't retract.

-HUH???!!!!!???? What'd you say??????

-Always felt like it was tipping over during refueling- the strut would suddenly compress on the fueling side and drop quickly with an unexpected fury.

-Bad Negative Torque Sensing problems that would/could drive the prop into reverse in a descent. American Eagle lost two of these in the same hole going into MIA due to this.

-Huh????? What did you say???????? I can't hear ya!

-Flew like a house, climbed like a house, would descend like a house, and looked like a house.

-The only aircraft in my aviation career that made me feel compelled to hide my face while walking away from it.

I rode on one of those once. The guy in front of me as we were walking out to it said "will this thing even get off the ground?" I was wondering the same thing.

Flying one must be like sex with a fat girl????

 

[WMUSIGPI]

I didn't mind the J31 all that much... But the ones I flew had yaw damp, GPS, and a tolerable autopilot. Personally the biggest POS in my book is the CRJ-200. Granted maybe that's because I had already flown the CRJ-900 for years first, or maybe it has to do with the S-bag airline. Either way the 200 should have gone right from Montreal to St. Louis (or wherever Budweiser makes their beer cans)

 

[Dragonbravo]

Dornier 328 turboprop. Needed Hulk Hogan's finger strength to get the props into reverse.

Over engineered piece of high speed German garbage.

Props had to be out of feather to flush the lav. (On the ground you flush by pouring a cup of coffee down there)

Plastic instrument panel was held on by Velcro and would frequently fall off.

Proximity sensors for everything.

Not enough rudder = VMC demo if you got 1 knot slow on V1 cut.

Nope. Didn't like it one bit, and this from a guy who previously flew the Jetstream 3100!

That airplane was a dream!! Sure it had some quirck like a A/C lav on a D/C airplane. The V1 cuts were insane in the sim. But in real life it just didn't care.

 

[nimtz]

Only good memories of the Shorts 330. Flew like a dream, offered widebody cockpit entry doors, and carried ice like a mule. So what if she was fugly, would get passed on the autobahn, and leaked gas into the cabin. When ur dating the fat girl that keeps you happy, I say hold your head high. Sometimes the other fellows just don't know what they are missing.

 

[AirCobra]

Remember though when we were tooling around traffic pattern in a ragged out Cessna 150 anyone of those aircraft mentioned seemed like a dream machine.

I once heard a conversation at Reno along these lines about "what was the worse warbird you and ever flown?" Unfortunately I had nothing to add.

 

[Microclimates]

A thread where pilots get to b!tch about stuff? Why didn't I think of it?

The Brasilia really was a good airplane, as long as it wasn't trying to kill you with an unrecoverable prop overspeed. It gets a few points deducted for that one. Oh, and who designed the hopelessly overcomplex flap systems?

yeah but she had that oh so sexy voice announcing impending doom. who cares? "auto... feather...." sounded positively dirty!

 

[no1pilot2000]

Bravo....bravo.....

 

[sniper]

What was the worst commuter aircraft YOU have flown?




Metroliner for me..

it really sucked during those cold f--- days

 

[IBNAV8R]

Metroliner. Bullet-proof airplane, flew well, but hotter than Hades. Would drink several liters a day but never had to pee. In the desert, one measured Metro time by the number of summers. Still, it was the coolest airplane I had flown to that point.

 

[Gr82Aviate]

Metroliner. Bullet-proof airplane, flew well, but hotter than Hades. Would drink several liters a day but never had to pee. In the desert, one measured Metro time by the number of summers. Still, it was the coolest airplane I had flown to that point.

We got several used metro's that previously flew for one of Lufthansa's feeders. Somehow they blew out copious amounts of cold air even on the hottest summer days in YUM, IPL, PSP, etc. Unlike the rest of our existing fleet, which earned the Sweatro moniker...

 

[livin'thesim]

Piper T1020.

 

[scarface]

Pretty much liked all the airplanes I've flown. That said when we'd put the C402 on to supplement/replace the Be-99 I was less than enthused. It didn't have much room or carry much plus it made me antsy in ice. Of course we were wusses compared to the Beech 18 drivers.
The Beech 99 and Otter were great and the M-298 was nice when everything was working. No worries about being spoiled by automation except, the M-298 actually had a Flight Director.
Roy Clark,not the singer, would have no part of autopilots. He and Dickie Henson were old school when today's old school were new school and they believed in the bare necessities.

 

[OPECJet]

Beech 18. God help you putting that twin tailed disaster back on the ground after losing an engine. No yaw damper required, but an autopilot, flight director, hell anything would have been nice. Cold as a well diggers arse in February when you're on the ground since using the heater would cause a puppy somewhere in Indiana to spontaneously combust (or it could have been the wing). Check the gas and fill the oil at every stop, only 7 gal per side, which still wasn't close to that Convair 240 I walked out on before flying it.

Everyone else thinks its cool though, as do I. Airplanes like that build character. If they don't kill you.

 

[Kaman]

The one that pays the least!

 

[Dan Roman]

Pretty much liked all the airplanes I've flown. That said when we'd put the C402 on to supplement/replace the Be-99 I was less than enthused. It didn't have much room or carry much plus it made me antsy in ice. Of course we were wusses compared to the Beech 18 drivers.
The Beech 99 and Otter were great and the M-298 was nice when everything was working. No worries about being spoiled by automation except, the M-298 actually had a Flight Director.
Roy Clark,not the singer, would have no part of autopilots. He and Dickie Henson were old school when today's old school were new school and they believed in the bare necessities.

+1....Flew the B99, SD 330 and Dash 7 at Henson. All I remember is they were all fun to fly at the time. I was in Henson's first 330 class when the airplane first came out. It felt like real "airliner" after the B99. I also remember envying the Nords at Ransome. They looked like heavy iron at the time when most of us "Allegheny Commuter" types were in 99's or otters.