What was the worst commuter aircraft YOU have flown?

[PBRstreetgang]

What yaw damper? We didn't have one.

And don't forget the crummy hydraulics...spinning the props became a preflight thing too because that was how you got the flaps to come up after all hyds lost pressure IN 2 HOURS.
To quote one of the instructors "you lose an engine, you gonna ********************in' die! Don't care what Handley Page or the FAA say...you gonna DIE! I have me more types than you kids got brain cells and this is the only piece of ******************** that's harder to fly than the damn sim!".
I always kinda laughed at pilots who talked smack about the J41. After the 32, I found the 41 to be one sweet machine. I came to love the thing in fact, I liked it even better than the CRJ.

Good to hear from a J Ball brother!

FRANK was Right!

 

[trip]

Sorry, meant to throw out the first pitch.

Jet stream 3200. What a joke.

Plastic, simulated rough wood yoke.

Unbalanced control; overly sensitive pitch, lumberjack roll and so short coupled that if the yaw damper was differed it was nauseating, if working, well, still nauseating.

Mechanical nose steering,

Punkalouevers. No air vents, Gaspers, Wemacs, eyeballs..........Punkalouevers.

Direct View windows. Not the ones in front of you, the side ones.

Main baggage compartment accessible only from the air stair, you can board pax or people but not at the same time.

And God forbid 1) the ground crew forget to lock the baggage compartment, 2) the ground crew used the cockpit crews key and did not return it, 3) the cockpit key is missing and you are being line checked by the FAA, 4) the lock fails anyway and the door is swinging in the breeze.

Lift Dump. Meet, what, 13 parameters and the flaps go from like 35 degrees to 70 degrees. Great question for the oral. And a surprise to the crew when it happens.

Mechanical Anti Skid.

Water wagon.

Only air frame that will not support a PT6 engine. For some reason they will self destruct in less than 100 hours on this aircraft.

Garrett engines.........get off the flight and spin them engines to prevent shaft bow.

Belly pod....Has a nice red light on the annunciater panel that says "POD FIRE" Cool ! What does the emergency checklist suggest ? NOTHING!!!!!

Main spar goes through main cabin aisle. So they put a ramp up/down on the floor. and then put a sign overhead that read "watch step" or something like that. It flashed on and off on the ground and went steady when airborne. So people boarding looked up to read the sign and tripped over the ramp.

There is more, just can't recall right now.

But what a beauty the J32 was!

HAH! But then I never flew the Shorts 330!




It's been 30 years since I last flew it. I hated every minute I did. Some of my complaints of it may be a little off , it's been awhile.


Oh. This just the short list!

How did you remember all this? The only thing I recall was flaps up-flows on.
Oh yeah and looking down in flight to see someone's hairy sandal clad foot from row 1 sticking under the cockpit door/curtain!

Another vote for the J31 dung beetle.

 

[Dornier 335]

Sorry, meant to throw out the first pitch.

Jet stream 3200. What a joke.

Plastic, simulated rough wood yoke.

Unbalanced control; overly sensitive pitch, lumberjack roll and so short coupled that if the yaw damper was differed it was nauseating, if working, well, still nauseating.

Mechanical nose steering,

Punkalouevers. No air vents, Gaspers, Wemacs, eyeballs..........Punkalouevers.

Direct View windows. Not the ones in front of you, the side ones.

Main baggage compartment accessible only from the air stair, you can board pax or people but not at the same time.

And God forbid 1) the ground crew forget to lock the baggage compartment, 2) the ground crew used the cockpit crews key and did not return it, 3) the cockpit key is missing and you are being line checked by the FAA, 4) the lock fails anyway and the door is swinging in the breeze.

Lift Dump. Meet, what, 13 parameters and the flaps go from like 35 degrees to 70 degrees. Great question for the oral. And a surprise to the crew when it happens.

Mechanical Anti Skid.

Water wagon.

Only air frame that will not support a PT6 engine. For some reason they will self destruct in less than 100 hours on this aircraft.

Garrett engines.........get off the flight and spin them engines to prevent shaft bow.

Belly pod....Has a nice red light on the annunciater panel that says "POD FIRE" Cool ! What does the emergency checklist suggest ? NOTHING!!!!!

Main spar goes through main cabin aisle. So they put a ramp up/down on the floor. and then put a sign overhead that read "watch step" or something like that. It flashed on and off on the ground and went steady when airborne. So people boarding looked up to read the sign and tripped over the ramp.

There is more, just can't recall right now.

But what a beauty the J32 was!

HAH! But then I never flew the Shorts 330!




It's been 30 years since I last flew it. I hated every minute I did. Some of my complaints of it may be a little off , it's been awhile.


Oh. This just the short list!

Didn't the J31 (or J32) have a problem with a light test switch that (when activated) killed both engines? I remember some ex-J32 drivers tell me stories about it @ Hulas Air...

Fact or Fiction?

 

[RJLoser]

Didn't the J31 (or J32) have a problem with a light test switch that (when activated) killed both engines? I remember some ex-J32 drivers tell me stories about it @ Hulas Air...

Fact or Fiction?

Fact. They discovered it in testing when you would test the CAP panel lights. They tested the lights and both engines shut down. When you test the CAP lights everything but the start (also shutdown) lights illuminate.

 

[Kaman]

1900C model with 65,000 cycles, NO auto briefer, NO Flight director on FOs side, old-style King Air seatbelt/shoulder harness(non-quick disconnect kind), worn out door snubber, CA paint job...lst goes on and on, but it flew pretty straight after tweaking the rudder and aileron trim...in EVERY flight regime...

 

[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