The Price of Two

Back in the heyday of general aviation, a sort of social structure developed, based on what you flew. Everyone aspired to move up the ladder, starting with a basic single like a 172, graduating to a big-engine fixed gear or retractable single, and finally reaching the pinnacle, the light twin. To pilots flying retractable singles, the most oft-asked question was "When will you be stepping up to a twin?" Not if�when. It was sacrilege not to want one. Most tried; everyone couldn't go all the way, and the manufacturers kept adding rungs to the ladder-cabin-class twins, turboprops, and jets-so even highly successful professionals and thriving small businesses couldn't make it to the top. Now, perhaps because it is so far to the top, the pinnacle for the personal/business user appears to have become the retractable single. There are only three light twins in production-the Beech Baron and Piper Seneca and Seminole-and these sold a total of 15 airplanes in the first quarter of 1990. By comparison, in the first quarter of 1980, which was really past the heyday, light twins accounted for 388 aircraft shipments.

In the used market, much is written about a high-performance single and twin from the same manufacturer of the same vintage selling for about the same money today, even though when new 10 years ago, the twin cost more than twice as much. Has this class airplane turned into a pariah in the marketplace, one no longer worthy of consideration?

Actually a light twin is as good (or better) a personal/business airplane value today as it was 10 years ago. This is especially true if you are buying used and starting with a level playing field when it comes to initial purchase price. One thing you have to face up front, however, is insurance. There may well be training and minimum flight time requirements that should be considered before you even contemplate the purchase of a twin. If a high insurance premium is attached to the other additional costs of flying a twin, it could just be the item that broke that rung on the ladder.

If insurance isn't a problem, you can go on to the next step, picking an airplane. Model 58 Barons, with the long cabin, are the most sought-after light twins and command by far the highest prices because they are, among other things, excellent air taxi airplanes. Looking at 10-year-old Model 58 Barons, asking prices are in the mid to upper $100,000 range. Used prices of its sibling single, the A36 Bonanza, don't lag that far behind because it is probably even more sought after as a single than the Baron is as a twin. The Baron and Bonanza are good airplanes to use in considering the relationship of the twin to the single, but the comparison would apply about equally to the Cessna 210 and 3 10, which sell for considerably less money in the used markets.

First, a buyer has to be honest about motives in order to attach the proper significance to the capabilities of the airplanes being compared. In other words, why do you want a twin? Ego? Performance? Dual systems? The ability to continue flight after the failure of an engine? Those would probably fit most twin-buyer profiles.

When comparing a twin with a single, the ego factor is definite and dramatic. There is no question that it is more satisfying to rumble up onto the ramp, or rumble away, to the sound of two engines loping along. Where an A36 Bonanza and a 58 Baron share the same basic fuselage dimensions, the Baron, because of its bigger tail, snout, engine nacelles, and greater wingspan, seems by far the larger of the two airplanes. It also feels like a larger airplane when taxiing as well as in flight. The wing loading of the twin is higher, which should result in a better ride in turbulence. Certainly an A36 or a Cessna 210 are rewarding airplanes, but Barons and 310s undoubtedly have a more imposing presence.

Performance is another major attribute of the twin. With two engines of the same horsepower as the single's one engine and with a maximum takeoff weight only about 50 percent higher, the twin has a lot of extra get up and go. There's a logical reason for this. The twin has to be able to fly on one engine and to meet a minimum rate of climb requirement at 5,000 feet if the stalling speed is in excess of 61 knots. If it'll do that, then the output of the other engine can all go into the climb. A 58 Baron climbs at almost 1,700 feet per minute at sea level in standard conditions, a Bonanza at just over 1,000 fpm. That is the most dramatic performance difference.

The service ceiling of a Baron is 18,600 feet-2,600 feet higher than a Bonanza. Because of the increase in weight and drag on the twin, its cruise is only about 30 knots greater than the single's. Where this really pays off is westbound in the wintertime, With a 50-knot headwind, a Baron will chug along at 150 knots groundspeed whereas a Bonanza will be back to 120. The slower you go, the bigger the perceived impact of strong headwinds.

Out flying trips, there would no doubt be an advantage to the Baron-20 minutes here, 30 there, depending on the length of the trip. The greatest difference would be on trips with strong headwinds, the smallest difference on trips with strong tailwinds. If you think about it, that is a relationship stacked heavily in favor of the faster airplane. With a ripping tailwind, you hardly ever feel like you would mortgage property to go faster. Not true with a headwind. Most of the Barons have more than twice the Bonanza's 74 gallons of usable fuel, so with more speed, they would also have a range advantage. The Baron would also have a payload/range advantage, except in a case where the Baron had more heavy options.

The twin's dual systems used to loom large in any comparison, but dual systems are available on Bonanzas and 210s. Both airplanes can also be fitted with airborne weather radar and deice equipment, as can the twins. In the past 10 or 15 years, systems redundancy and the availability of weather detection and avoidance gear has become more a simple cost question rather than a twin-versus-single question.

You can make almost everything redundant on the single, but you still have but one basic engine. In the twin, you have at least the potential of continuing flight after the failure of an engine. The drawback, which has been discussed for years, is that pilots of twins don't do as well at managing engine failures as pilots of singles. As a result, proportionately about four times more twins are in fatal crashes after engine failures than singles. Sweep that aside for this discussion, and assume that we are dealing with a pilot who, with flashing hands, dashing feet, and a burst of brilliance, will handle with aplomb an engine failure at the worst possible time. Then you indeed have the ability to fly to an airport after an engine failure. It is on this very consideration that most decisions to buy a twin are made. "I just don't feel good flying a single (at night, IFR, over cities, over deserts, over rough terrain)." Fill in the blank with any or all, and unless you are willing to be a VFR day person over carefully selected routes, the decision to fly a twin has been made.

This is nothing to take lightly because how you feel about what you do with airplanes is an important part of the equation. An uneasy pilot is not as good a pilot as he should be. We should always be suspicious of anything mechanical, but to dwell on something, such as an engine failure, takes a lot of the enjoyment out of flying. In the twin, real comfort comes with an ace pilot at the controls, and there are a lot of us flying around who believe that, given enough training, we can reach that state.

In this exercise, I have been thinking in terms of 10-year-old airplanes. At this age, some of the available twins have a lot of time in the log; most of the singles have less. Some of the twins got the hours flying checks and other things (maybe including baby chickens) around at night. This shouldn't be a harder life than any other (except maybe for the chicken business), but it does result in a lot of flying time over a relatively short period. Given good maintenance, this shouldn't be an overriding consideration.

All the 10-year-old airplanes, twins and singles, should have good, serviceable IFR avionics packages, most with a lot of extras. On some light twins, the prices are all over the place for airplanes of like age. The pressurized Cessna 340 (at an original MTOW of 5,995 pounds, still a light twin-the line is drawn at 6,000 pounds) is one of these. There are a lot of modifications for 340s, most dealing with power, and an airplane with all the mods and recently overhauled or remanufactured engines will have an asking price far in excess of a standard airplane in average shape.

The decade-old airplanes are still worth enough money that there is a fair chance they have received adequate maintenance. You can go back a lot farther than a decade and get twins with a much lower purchase price. In fact, the supply increases as you start to look at airplanes older than 10 years, but avionics may need an upgrade, and the airplane may or may not have been maintained to high standards. You can also look at twins with smaller engines, such as the Beech Travel Air or Piper Twin Comanche, which are both quite efficient and offer Bonanza performance at relatively small increases in cost.

Whatever price you pay for a used twin, the direct operating costs will be the same as for a newer model of the same airplane. If the airplane has suffered some maintenance neglect, recovery to a high standard of airworthiness will be even more costly than with a single because you have two engines to bring up to par. It is more after the purchase than before that the twin buyer has to make peace with his pocketbook. Using twice as much fuel to fly 18 percent faster might be rationalized. Spending twice as much for engine and prop overhaul to fly 18 percent faster also has to be rationalized, along with a generally higher maintenance burden that comes from having to do all engine-related items twice. The cost of additional initial, as well as recurrent, training might be added in, but that might also be considered as an enjoyable challenge. Some say that light twins are more complicated to fly than small jets, and there is some truth to that. There is also a lot of truth to the fact that many pilots derive pure pleasure from complex operations.

While the cost part contributed to the decline in popularity of the light twin, it is also a moot point. In no area do we buy for minimum cost and maximum efficiency. If we did, we'd all be driving Yugos and living in house trailers. If you want it and can afford it, you'll buy it.

Twins make superb personal traveling airplanes and are a lot of fun to fly. All the ingredients are right. But at some point in the recent past, one strong factor changed and upset the ego part of the consideration, focusing a pilot's "I want" drive somewhere else. Instrument panels became the compulsion; pilots now appear to consider that the pinnacle of airplane ownership is related to electronic flight instrumentation, area navigation systems, moving maps, Stormscopes, radar, engine monitors, and all the other intriguing devices that can be installed in the panel. Those things and the size of the refrigerator in your T-hangar have simply come to mean more than the number of engines on your airplane. But twins are still fun, and after an engine stops running....