Skymaster safety record: Engine Failures?

[w1bw]

Greetings, everyone. I'm a new member to this site, though I've lurked here on and off for the last year or so. First, thanks to Kevin and the others for making this a very useful place.

Second, an introduction...

I'm not (yet?) a Skymaster owner. I'm a 260 hr PP-ASEL-IA, and I own a 1985 Skylane. I love it. But I'm in a new phase of life which has caused me to think seriously about a twin. I now have two young daughters (4 and 2), so the stakes are raised! We also now have an island vacation home, and doing the weekly commute this summer, I've found that I'm probably spending at least 15% of my flight hours over the ocean beyond gliding distance to land, especially since this has been an IMC-full summer here in the northeast, and the IFR routings give me less flexibility in that regard.

I've always been interested in Skymasters ever since I had a high school girlfriend with one (well, her father had one). I'm currently thinking seriously about normally aspirated models. I have to ask one serious devil's advocate reality-check question, though.

There was another thread about real-life engine failures. This supported a notion that has been in the back of my mind. Anecdotally, there seems to be a very high rate of engine failures in Skymasters. It seems that almost every article I've read in various magizines include owner comments of the form: "CLT is a great thing, because when I had my engine failure(s), it was no big deal...".

In general, it's a testimony to the design that people with such experiences are happy with the outcome (at least the ones here to write about it), but it's somewhat alarming to me that no one has any trouble finding ample real-world power failures, including this forum. Sooner or later, it can bite someone. Aviation Consumer references an NTSB study which ranked the Skymaster 16th out of 20 in fatal accident rates related to engine failure. I understand that the picture would be better if a bunch of people didn't try to take off on one engine, but still....

Is the Skymaster a great concept with a poor implementation, is this just rotten luck, or are these statistics dominated by stupid pilot tricks? It seems clear the people in this forum are highly motivated by safety. I do math; I understand the sample sizes are not large, and limited past actual results don't imply that it is inherently less safe. But we should all attempt to understand why we think we will do better than those who have come before us. I'm sure everyone here has rationalized this in one way or another, and I would like to hear.

After all, if I didn't think the Skymaster would be safer for my current flying situation, I'm more than happy with my Skylane!

--bruce