Piper Seminole training
The airplane this school flies the multi-engine rating in. What the airplane teaches, why a conventional light twin is the right thing to learn asymmetric flight in, and why no performance figure for it appears on this page.
Why is the Piper Seminole used for multi-engine training?
Because it is a conventional light twin: two piston engines mounted out on the wings, retractable gear, and propellers that can be feathered. Every one of those is a teaching requirement rather than a convenience, and an airplane missing any of them teaches a different and smaller lesson.
Engines mounted out on the wings are the whole point. Thrust acting several feet from the centreline is what produces asymmetric yaw when one engine stops, and asymmetric yaw is the subject of the rating. Put both engines on the fuselage centreline instead and almost none of that yaw appears, which is why a rating earned in such an airplane comes out restricted — 14 CFR 61.45(b)(2) provides that where an aircraft's operating characteristics prevent an applicant from performing all the required tasks, the certificate is issued with an appropriate limitation attached.
Feathering propellers matter for the same reason. A propeller left windmilling produces, in the words of the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook, parasite drag potentially as great as that of the whole airframe. If the training airplane cannot feather, the drill you practise is not the drill that saves you.
Retractable gear adds the third piece, and a slightly counter-intuitive one. Extended gear helps the airplane weathervane and quietly assists the rudder, so V_MC rises when the gear comes up. Fixed gear cannot show you that at all, and it ranks among the better lessons a light twin has to offer.
What does a light twin teach that a single-engine airplane cannot?
Three things, and none of them is speed. Everything worth learning in a light twin follows from the fact that the second engine is not a spare.
That performance is bought out of surplus, and the surplus is thin
The FAA Airplane Flying Handbook puts the loss at 80 to 90 percent of climb performance when half the installed power goes. Reading that is one thing. Watching a vertical speed indicator settle near zero with one propeller stopped, at a field 802 feet above sea level on a warm afternoon, is a different kind of learning and it is not available in a single.
This is the lesson that transfers furthest. Every performance chart you read afterwards is read differently once you have seen what happens to a climb rate when the reserve disappears.
That an emergency has an order, and the order is the skill
Identify, verify, feather, secure. The identification step exists because the airplane does not tell you which engine failed; your feet do, and only if you interpret them correctly. The verify step exists because feet can be wrong, and shutting down the working engine is the mistake this sequence exists to prevent.
In a single, an engine failure gives you one decision: where to land. In a twin, it gives you a procedure that must be executed in order under time pressure, and that is a genuinely different skill.
That systems complexity is a workload, not a feature
Two fuel systems with a crossfeed between them. Two electrical sources feeding one bus structure. Propeller governors, a feathering mechanism, and an accumulator holding the pressure needed to bring a feathered propeller back. The oral at the practical test lives here, and so does most of the studying.
A useful reframing: the extra engine did not simply add redundancy, it added a set of ways to get the configuration wrong. That is the honest description of a light twin and it is the one an examiner is testing.
Does the Seminole have a critical engine?
That depends on the propeller rotation of the specific airframe, which is a property recorded in its type certificate data sheet and its flight manual rather than something a web page should assert. Ask it on day one, because the answer changes the briefing.
Here is the concept, which is worth understanding regardless of the answer for any particular airplane. On a twin whose propellers both turn the same way, the descending blade of each propeller produces more thrust than the ascending blade — P-factor. FAA-H-8083-3C draws out the consequence. On the right engine the descending blade works further away from the centre of gravity, giving it the longer moment arm, so a failure of the left engine leaves the greater asymmetry behind. The left engine is then the critical one.
Some light twins are built with counter-rotating propellers, meaning one turns opposite to the other. That arrangement puts the thrust asymmetry on the same arm whichever engine fails, so neither is worse than the other and the airplane has no critical engine. It is a real design difference with real consequences for how a failure is briefed and flown.
We are not going to state which arrangement our airframe uses, because we could not verify it from a primary source while writing this page and we would rather leave a gap than fill it with something plausible. This is the same discipline that keeps every V-speed off this site. Your instructor will answer it in the first hour with the flight manual open, which is where the answer properly lives.
Why are there no performance figures for the Seminole here?
Because a number typed onto a web page is not the number you will fly. Speeds, weights and climb figures attach to one airframe, at one weight, on one day, and the only authoritative source is that aircraft's own flight manual.
The rule we apply
No V-speed, weight or performance figure for a named aircraft appears anywhere on this site unless it was taken from that airframe's own flight manual, or from the type certificate data sheet covering it. Neither document was reachable while this page was written, so nothing of that kind is printed here.
That includes V_MC and V_YSE for this airplane, its stall speeds, its cruise speed, its engine ratings and its useful load. If you want those figures, ask for the manual. That is the right answer to the question from any school.
Why this matters more on a twin than anywhere else
Because the numbers move more. V_MC is a certification figure fixed at the least favourable weight and centre of gravity with the gear up, and a real airplane on a real day is seldom in that condition. Single-engine climb performance varies with weight, temperature and density altitude enough that a published cruise figure tells you almost nothing about the day you actually need it.
A school that prints a tidy speed on a marketing page is describing a certification document, not your flight. We would rather teach you to read the chart.
What we will tell you
The airplane is a conventional light twin with an engine on each wing, retractable landing gear and feathering propellers, and it is owned and maintained by this operation rather than hired in for your lesson. It is inspected under the regime that applies once an aircraft is used to give flight instruction for hire, at 14 CFR 91.409(b).
Everything else is in the flight manual, and you will have it open on day one.
What does it cost to fly the Seminole?
Two ways, and only two. $5,100 buys the multi-engine rating flown in it. $499 buys an hour of dual instruction in it. There is no hourly rate for this airplane on this site and there will not be one.
Multi-Engine Add-On
The class rating, flown in this airplane, added to a private or commercial certificate under 14 CFR 61.63(c).
- ✓Seminole time to checkride standard
- ✓Dual instruction throughout
- ✓All engine-out, feathering and V_MC work
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
An hour in the twin
Sixty minutes of dual instruction. You do the flying and the time goes in your logbook.
- ✓No prior twin experience needed
- ✓Loggable dual instruction
- ✓Credited in full if you enrol inside a day
Airline Career Track
The twin phase sits inside the full route from zero hours to a commercial certificate with an instructor rating.
- ✓Five phases, one number
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Nothing repriced at a boundary
Redbird MCX session
Full-motion and fully enclosed. Where some of the identification and flow repetition goes when the ramp is busy.
- ✓Never cancelled for weather
- ✓Strong on procedure
- ✓Weak on landings, and we say so
What is verifiable about this airplane and the people who teach in it?
Four things, each of which you can confirm by asking a direct question and expecting a direct answer.
The twin belongs to the operation
It is owned and maintained in-house rather than brokered or chartered in on the day of your lesson. That is what makes consecutive-day scheduling possible, and it is the difference between a two-week rating and a two-month one.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Make-and-model hours behind every instructor who teaches in it
14 CFR 61.195(f) prevents anyone from giving the training required for a rating in a multiengine airplane until five hours as pilot in command of that exact make and model sit behind them. Ask how many instructors at any school clear that bar on the twin you would fly.
14 CFR 61.195(f)Airframe types on the ramp
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. The Arrow II earns its place here: gear that retracts and a propeller with a governor, met singly, beats meeting all of it at once.
Owned and maintained in-housePerformance figures published for this airplane
None, deliberately. Speed, weight and climb figures belong to one airframe's manual, read at the weight and on the day you are flying. We would rather publish nothing than publish a number we cannot source.
Aircraft flight manual onlyPrices held behind a form
None. $5,100 for the rating and $499 for the hour are on this page, with no spread attached.
Published in fullWhat we are not telling you about this airplane
Its speeds, weights, engine ratings and climb performance, because neither the flight manual nor the type certificate data sheet was reachable while this page was written, and a plausible figure is worse than an absent one. The same applies to its propeller rotation and therefore to whether it has a critical engine. Ask on day one and read the answer in the manual.
Training here happens at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. This is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and there is no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any carrier. Nothing on this page offers an interview, a job or a salary.
No pass rate, no graduate count and no safety record appear anywhere on this site. The operation is new; a statistic drawn from it would be too small a sample to mean anything, and inventing one would be worse than the silence.
What people ask about training in the twin
It is the airplane the multi-engine rating is flown in. Two ways to book it exist and no others: $5,100 for the class rating added under 14 CFR 61.63(c), and $499 for an hour of dual instruction. It is owned and maintained by the operation rather than chartered in.
None is published on this site and none will be. The twin exists here as a $5,100 rating and a $499 hour of dual instruction. The only hourly figure published anywhere on this site is $179 wet in a single-engine airplane for enrolled students, which covers the airframe and its fuel and not the instructor.
Not a number we will print. V_MC is fixed during certification at the least favourable weight and centre of gravity with the gear up, and the figure for any particular airframe belongs in the flight manual for that airframe. Ask to see the manual, which is the correct answer to that question from any school.
We could not confirm the configuration of our airframe against a primary source while writing this page, so we are not asserting it either way. The concept is worth knowing regardless: counter-rotating propellers remove the thrust asymmetry that makes one engine critical, so an airplane built that way has no critical engine. Your instructor will answer it with the flight manual open.
Not with both engines running. It handles like an airplane and most people are comfortable with normal operations inside two or three flights. The difficulty is asymmetric: the drill sequence when an engine stops, and the systems knowledge the oral examines. That is where the ten to fifteen hours actually go.
Because gear position changes V_MC. The FAA Airplane Flying Handbook is explicit that retracting the landing gear raises it, since extended gear adds keel area behind the centre of gravity and helps the airplane weathervane into the relative wind. A fixed-gear twin has no way to demonstrate it, and the demonstration is among the more useful things a light twin offers.
No rate card for aircraft hire is published on this site, for this airplane or any other. The operation sells training rather than aircraft time, which is why the twin appears here only as the $5,100 rating and the $499 instructional hour.
Often, and it is a sensible order. Retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller both appear on the Piper Arrow II, so meeting those systems singly, in an airplane with one engine, leaves more attention free later when there are two of each and one has just stopped.
Ten to fifteen for most people. 14 CFR 61.63(c)(3) sets no minimum at all for an added class rating, so the hours are a description of what usually happens rather than a requirement. Pilots who are instrument-current and flying weekly finish nearer the lower figure.
Book the $499 hour and fly it. You do the flying, the hour counts as loggable dual instruction, and enrolling inside a day takes the fee off the program. An hour in the airplane answers questions that no amount of reading about it will.
Where to read next
An hour in the airplane, with the flight manual open afterwards
Book sixty minutes of dual instruction in the Seminole. You do the flying, the time is loggable, and you will get better answers about this airplane in the debrief than any page can give you. Enrol inside a day and the fee comes off the program.
Fly the aeroplane once, then decide
The assessment flight is the first hour of the syllabus and a two-way evaluation. You fly it from the left seat with an instructor beside you, they write down what they saw, and you get an honest read on whether the plan is realistic. It is loggable, and it is credited in full against enrolment if you enroll within 24 hours.
What happens on an assessment flight →