Tecnam announced this week its P2006T NG (Next Generation) piston twin has been granted European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification. The news comes 15 years after the original P2006T entered the market.
Other than training and fuel consumption, I’m not really sure why anyone would want to own this airplane. Its slow and useful load is anemic. That’s being polite. It pretty much has the performance of a 172 with the luxury of maintaining two engines. Single engine operation is almost useless.
I would not want to fly it, the specs are kind of like an Apache with fat people in it and engines a couple thousand hours past TBO. At least Apaches used to be cheap.
It’s purely for training purposes. Very popular among flight schools especially here in Europe, where I did my MEP, MEPIR and part of my CPL training with it. The single engine performance is absolutely terrible and in my opinion a bit risky. It requires very good instructors to make sure the student doesn’t make the speed drop below VMCA and stall spin it.
I think people seriously underestimate how much of the modern TC’d piston market is driven by the needs of flight schools. Does anyone really think that an individual who could actually afford a half a million for a brand new 172 is going to be content doing 120 KTAS with one to tow passengers and maybe some baggage? Let alone the measly performance of this thing. The only way that spending that much money for so little airplane makes sense is if there is some kind of ROI. Normal folk like you and me have to be content with either buying and selling half century old metal or rolling our own.
Why even use piston aircraft? Colleges are the only buyers and they are direct recipients of Federal Student Loans /Grants so expense is irrelevant. Use a purpose-built HondaJet or Citation Mustang along with extensive use of simulators. Then restrict them to only flying multi engine jet equipment. Safer and more relevant. The insurance companies will toast the death of the piston twin.
The older “school twins”, the Seminole and Duchess twins, are vastly better airplanes than this one-engine airplane with 4 cylinders on one wing and 4 on the other.
This sounds like a horrid and dangerous airplane.
Holy Smoke. Not paying attention until now, I didn’t realize that those engines are only 100 hp each. Shut one down and you only have remaining about 60 effective hp from the other. Unless you fly empty on a standard day near sea level, as a twin it has both engines because it needs them to fly, not for redundancy. I think it is nice looking, but for purpose it has none other than flight training.
How about putting those Turbotech turboprops Bristell used on the B23 Turbine (BRISTELL Turboprop < BRISTELL airplanes) on the P2006? Seems like that would make a pretty capable, modern, and fun platform
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