Failure rate by engine model?

Skepilot

Pre-Flight
Joined
Jul 11, 2017
Messages
98
Location
USA
Display Name

Display name:
Skepilot
Is there any database available where one can see Mean Time Between Failure or similar stats for engines delineated by model? A Google search turned up various articles and opinions but I didn’t see any hard data.

I’m asking this question in relation to my thread about SR22 vs Twin Comanche. The IO-320 seems to have a reputation of being bulletproof, whereas the IO-550 is sometimes maligned. I would really love to see some hard data vs hearsay/anecdotes.
 
I suspect the numbers will be useless; perhaps certain engines are typically used in a certain regime, perhaps some are often mishandled, etc. so a 1:1 comparison is not possible. I'm one of those for whom mechanical devices seem to last forever (though I've never put more than 300 hours on any given aircraft engine).
 
Light case 520s are definitively up there in the failure rate hall of fame. Contis for sure. Turbo generally blow ducting too, which leads to torching the compartment. No data to back up these assertions on a normalized basis, but on a purely religious basis if fear of engine failure is what I wanted to minimize, 4 banger NA parallel valve Lycoming is the way I would go. Problem is as always, captive audience. These are low power applications, so the airframe available to you are minimized.
 
The NTSB accident database has a column for engine total time, but as far as I can tell, not a single accident shows an entry for it (There's also columns for engine time since inspection, propeller make/model, etc...also all blank).

Power failures occur in only a minority of aircraft accidents, and a good number of them are due to factors other than the engine (e.g., fuel exhaustion). Only about 8% of Cessna 172 accidents, for instance, involve mechanical failure of the engine, and a majority of those cases are maintenance-related.

So the size of the data pool is smaller than one might think. While the NTSB now includes search parameters to help one quickly find accidents with engine failures, that information is only included in accidents starting in 2008. This gives only ~400 accidents to work with, unless one wants to manually examine accidents prior to 2008. This is a small basis to compare engine types.

Ron Wanttaja
 
So the size of the data pool is smaller than one might think. While the NTSB now includes search parameters to help one quickly find accidents with engine failures, that information is only included in accidents starting in 2008. This gives only ~400 accidents to work with, unless one wants to manually examine accidents prior to 2008. This is a small basis to compare engine types.
Ron Wanttaja

Not all engine failures end up in a NTSB report either. I'm sure exponentially more are caught at maintenance or are unreported.
 
Back
Top