King Air Gotchas

deadstick

Well-Known Member
I got to thinking that, with the possibility of many airline pilots getting furloughed, some might be able to land a job flying one of many iterations of the mighty King Air. I also got to thinking that some might have gone from a Cessna CFI to an RJ FO -> RJ CA -> Boeing/‘Bus FO -> ??? without an intermediate step.

This is not intended to be condescending, but a heads-up. Do not assume your 5000 hrs in an RJ will make you the master of a turboprop.

You’re accustomed to climbing through ice, deviating hundreds of miles for weather, and having performance to spare. That’s not always the reality of the turboprop world. Some planes like the mid-teens and others have just enough power OEI to get you back to the ramp...with some 270d turns.

If you find yourself privileged to fly a King Air, aside from your initial training, read these articles: Ask the Expert Archives - King Air

Pay attention to this one and, specifically, the part about the friction knobs. Complacency kills. Period.

It’s also called Power Lever Migration. I’ve had it happen to me, and it gets your attention. Recent docket items in the ADS KA 350 accident lead me to think the NTSB is looking at this as a factor in that accident.

I am writing this now because it’s possible that another such fatal accident occurred today at RFD. A 200 crashed on takeoff and already several similarities with other such events have been identified. Hopefully, this is not the case, but I’m a Rule 39 kinda guy.

51E71D32-F13D-481A-9E2A-B9E9F70803BB.png


If any of y’all find yourself heading into something new, ask questions, there’s all kinds of experience here on TC...that’s Turboprop Careers :cool:.

Never stop being willing to learn and always make it home from the hangar.
 
Here is one that happened to me when I was flying the 350. Now first off I was primarily flying an EASy Falcon about 90% of the time but this managed to turn into a NASA report for me. This was in a 350 with proline 21 and Jepp charts on the DU.

So we were in BOS and runway and got SID change while we were taxiing out and we were to to climb via. Admittedly we briefed the change while taxiing but the important part is that we missed that the SID had different altitudes for non turbojet aircraft. With the way the Sid is displayed when zoomed in on the DU it cut off the lower part of the box that displayed that, and both of us who flew the jet as our primary aircraft it didn’t even dawn on me to look below to be sure there wasn’t a different altitude. For those of you still reading it was the Logan2, which has a top altitude of 5000 for jets and 3000 for non-jet.

So we took off and climbed to 5000’, when departure asked us what altitude we were climbing to we told him 5000’ and then he asked if that was what we were assigned, we just said yes, I don’t remember if we said we were climbing via or not. But it did make us look at each other and pull the chart up again and that is when we caught our error. ATC didn’t say anything else and we both filed NASA reports.

Moral of the story, when using electronic charts that are zoomed in always scroll to all 4 corners and be extra vigilant when going back and forth between jets and props.

And always check the throttle friction! And don’t skip the run up either. All it takes is for the cannon plug to be installed backwards to get the rudder boost to be reversed, that’s at least what I was told.

Enjoy the King Air, I loved flying it. It and the 737 are both similar in that they are like a 67 impala with an iPad glued to the dash, stone simple and rarely break.
 
I got to thinking that, with the possibility of many airline pilots getting furloughed, some might be able to land a job flying one of many iterations of the mighty King Air. I also got to thinking that some might have gone from a Cessna CFI to an RJ FO -> RJ CA -> Boeing/‘Bus FO -> ??? without an intermediate step.

This is not intended to be condescending, but a heads-up. Do not assume your 5000 hrs in an RJ will make you the master of a turboprop.

You’re accustomed to climbing through ice, deviating hundreds of miles for weather, and having performance to spare. That’s not always the reality of the turboprop world. Some planes like the mid-teens and others have just enough power OEI to get you back to the ramp...with some 270d turns.

If you find yourself privileged to fly a King Air, aside from your initial training, read these articles: Ask the Expert Archives - King Air

Pay attention to this one and, specifically, the part about the friction knobs. Complacency kills. Period.

It’s also called Power Lever Migration. I’ve had it happen to me, and it gets your attention. Recent docket items in the ADS KA 350 accident lead me to think the NTSB is looking at this as a factor in that accident.

I am writing this now because it’s possible that another such fatal accident occurred today at RFD. A 200 crashed on takeoff and already several similarities with other such events have been identified. Hopefully, this is not the case, but I’m a Rule 39 kinda guy.

View attachment 55175

If any of y’all find yourself heading into something new, ask questions, there’s all kinds of experience here on TC...that’s Turboprop Careers :cool:.

Never stop being willing to learn and always make it home from the hangar.
Not to dis the jet jocks, but jets get you no T props, nor do they mean you can fly a T-prop. Never thought I'd see the day that airline pilots failed 135 checks. But it's happening.
 
Piston twins are a whole nother ball game

I can’t say I agree 100%. This perception is one of the things that can get KA pilots in trouble. For instance, it isn’t always a “go” airplane. There are some scenarios in the 200 where pulling the power back after OEI is the best course of action for a really crappy situation.

Some of this is covered in the KA Magazine column I linked earlier. One thing that is covered is the insane (for marketing/short field performance) V speeds. Every model below the 300 falls into the Multiengine General Purpose Airplane Family and is a Normal Category “Light Twin.” There is no climb or factored data requirement. If the spaghetti graphs tell you that you need 3,999 ft to takeoff and the pavement is 4,000 ft — G2G! Not smart, but....

V Speeds...you rotate the 200 at 95 KIAS with Flaps Up and blueline is 121 KIAS. That 26 kts can take some time to get and a lot of real estate. It was eye-opening for some pilots when I showed them the summer-time TOFL (to 35 ft) OEI was almost 2 miles at a couple of the places we went. And these airports had 5000 ft runways. The other end of the discussion was the short runways we went into all the time. The Accel-Stop numbers were within 50 ft of the DER. That’s the thickness of the chart line. That’s with a perfect plane, perfect pilot technique, and a brakes-release/static takeoff, and few were doing that. The 200, specifically, is great when both motors are working and woefully underpowered when one tanks. Do not assume anything. There’s a reason the military C12 crews uses a rotation speed of 110 KIAS for 12.5/Flaps Up. The Accel-Stop goes up, but 121 KIAS is a lot closer. Too bad the manufacturer won’t put that out for public use.
 
1000 hours in a 1900 sometimes 119.5hr a month. It was more than a decade ago but i think i could still fly one without killing anyone.
 
I can’t say I agree 100%. This perception is one of the things that can get KA pilots in trouble. For instance, it isn’t always a “go” airplane. There are some scenarios in the 200 where pulling the power back after OEI is the best course of action for a really crappy situation.

Some of this is covered in the KA Magazine column I linked earlier. One thing that is covered is the insane (for marketing/short field performance) V speeds. Every model below the 300 falls into the Multiengine General Purpose Airplane Family and is a Normal Category “Light Twin.” There is no climb or factored data requirement. If the spaghetti graphs tell you that you need 3,999 ft to takeoff and the pavement is 4,000 ft — G2G! Not smart, but....

V Speeds...you rotate the 200 at 95 KIAS with Flaps Up and blueline is 121 KIAS. That 26 kts can take some time to get and a lot of real estate. It was eye-opening for some pilots when I showed them the summer-time TOFL (to 35 ft) OEI was almost 2 miles at a couple of the places we went. And these airports had 5000 ft runways. The other end of the discussion was the short runways we went into all the time. The Accel-Stop numbers were within 50 ft of the DER. That’s the thickness of the chart line. That’s with a perfect plane, perfect pilot technique, and a brakes-release/static takeoff, and few were doing that. The 200, specifically, is great when both motors are working and woefully underpowered when one tanks. Do not assume anything. There’s a reason the military C12 crews uses a rotation speed of 110 KIAS for 12.5/Flaps Up. The Accel-Stop goes up, but 121 KIAS is a lot closer. Too bad the manufacturer won’t put that out for public use.

No airplane is always a "go" airplane even after V1. It's just more likely that "go" is better than "stop" as the airplane gets more sophisticated and the certification standard increases. In "big" airplanes the probability that the "right call is go" approaches unity.

The King Air series machines are great airplanes, particularly single pilot, but if you are not absolutely prepared to lose an engine at V1 they are a bear if you actually do. They perform relatively poorly if autofeather doesn't occur and the pilot does nothing. That said, the Navajo was down right alarming on one engine, not "bad" but with the BLR kit the gross weight went up 368lbs for no appreciable reason and you had an extremely short amount of time to go "gear up, flaps up, identify, verify, feather, secure, close the cowl" if you wanted to live. I went from the 1900 into the Navajo (I needed a raise with a baby on the way so I came back to Alaska) and found the airplane to be extraordinarily busy in comparison.

The Navajo legs were generally shorter in duration, you had to be several minutes in front of the airplane in a way that wasn't really required in turboprop land, and you were ALWAYS doing something. Adjusting the throttles, watching nacelle fuel, etc. While the airplane was "simpler" the actual act of flying it was substantially more demanding. This is kind of the same issue the jet jocks will have going into Tprop land if they're not careful.

A guy I met lost an engine in a chieftain out of Fairbanks on a warm summer day at 7368 and wasn't able to stop descending until he closed the cowl flap on the dead engine... That is significantly less performance than a King Air. Even in a commuter category airplane there's basically nothing you have to do if you lose an engine at V1 until you get high enough to need to do the memory items.

In truth, it doesn't matter what you fly, you have to be aware of the limitations of the machine, and understand the performance. My honest to God take on all of this is that the last airplane you flew is basically irrelevant. What are you flying right now, and how was your flight, especially your last approach and landing? If you cannot find a way you could improve your last flight, stop flying.
 
The 350 has been falling out of the sky with some regularity lately. The 250 too with the same auto feather system (the one that went into the sim bay at flight safe was making power)

With a friction lock not tight (because mx does it all the time) you get a roll back at V1. With a partial power reduction and split (less then 90% tq) auto feather disarms. With auto feather disarmed you’re mind will probably assume a engine failure.

You’ll revert back to primary training if you are really unlucky, you push the remaining engine up to the stop (156% torque) and upside down you go because the rudder isn’t designed for 156% power.

It happened to me. Twice on the same take off.

I was contracting on them with some regularity until lately. I probably won’t go back since I’m just not as current.
 
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The problem with the 350 is the first step in the Emergency Procedure. Unlike the 90/200-series, the first step (or any step...it’s not there) isn’t “Power- Maximum Allowable.” Again, light twin training for “light twins” and that’s what saved my bacon save the lives of me and my medcrew when I first experienced it in the 90. Heck, that was our procedure in the 1900 as a crew. “Engine Failure. Set max power. Props full forward. Positive rate. Gear up — Verify....” That script and procedure was burned into the brain 13 years ago. Primacy, intensity, effect— it’s all true. Why it isn’t it in the 350? Because you are trained to move your right hand from the PLs to the yoke at V1 as a single pilot. You’re never trained to verify the PLs are where they’re supposed to be. As for the ICT crash, that pilot had gotten his 350 type a week prior. Recency.

We can also go into the rudder boost system and how it goes against the dead-foot-dead engine mantra from light twin training. FWIW, the NTSB cited this as an issue in the ICT crash.
 
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