Piper Seminole Training
The airplane this school flies the multi-engine rating in. What it teaches, why a conventional light twin is the right machine to learn asymmetric flight in, and why you will not find a single performance figure for it on this page.
Why Is The Piper Seminole Used For Multi-Engine Training?
Because it is a conventional light twin, and every part of that description is a teaching requirement rather than a convenience. Two piston engines mounted out along the wings, so the thrust lines are genuinely offset and the asymmetry is real. Propellers whose blades can be feathered, so the drill has something to do. Retractable gear and controllable-pitch propellers, so the airplane is complex and the systems workload is the workload a twin actually imposes.
Take away any one of those and the airplane stops teaching the thing you came for. Engines on the fuselage centreline produce no meaningful asymmetry, which is why a practical test flown in such an airplane carries a centerline-thrust limitation. Fixed-pitch propellers cannot be feathered. Fixed gear removes half the flow. What is left is a machine that flies on two engines rather than one, which is not the same subject.
It also sits at the right point on the difficulty curve. The Seminole is docile enough that ordinary handling takes a couple of days rather than a week, which matters because the training time you have should be spent on failures rather than on learning to land a new airplane. The difficulty in this rating is not where people expect it to be.
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 a single fact: the second engine is not a spare, and behaving as though it were is how people get hurt.
The first is that performance is bought out of surplus, and the surplus is thinner than it looks. Level flight consumes most of what two engines produce; climb is funded from what remains. NTSB Safety Alert SA-081 states the consequence directly, describing the loss of one engine as a fifty percent power loss capable of reducing climb performance by at least eighty to ninety percent. Nothing in single-engine flying prepares you for a number that lopsided.
The second is that an emergency has an order, and the order is the actual skill. Fly the airplane, identify, verify, feather while there is still rpm to feather with, secure, and only then decide where you are going. Every step in that sequence is placed where it is for a reason, and the sequence is what a checkride examines. In a single-engine airplane an emergency is mostly a decision about where to land; in a twin it is a procedure executed under time pressure, and that is a different kind of competence.
The third is that systems complexity is a workload rather than a feature. Two of most things, plus crossfeeds, plus a feathering mechanism, plus an accumulator that lets a feathered blade be brought back, plus an electrical arrangement where the question of which bus survives which failure has a specific answer. A twin oral goes here and stays here, and this is the part of the rating a fast pair of hands does not help with.
Does Training In The Seminole Cover The Complex Endorsement?
It involves the same airplane and a different signature, and the two get confused constantly. A complex airplane carries retractable gear, flaps and a propeller whose pitch you control, which describes the Seminole. Before anyone acts as pilot in command of such an airplane, 14 CFR 61.31(e) wants training on the ground and in the air from an authorized instructor, a finding of proficiency in the machine and its systems, and a single logbook endorsement recording it.
That signature is separate from the 61.63(c)(1) endorsement that lets you take the multi-engine practical test. In practice a pilot training here in the twin will collect both, but they answer different questions and an examiner may well ask you to distinguish them. Anyone who tells you a class rating automatically covers complex operations has skipped a paragraph of part 61.
There is a related question about the single-engine fleet. A pilot who has already flown the Piper Arrow II arrives with complex operations behind them, which takes a small amount of load off the first days in the twin. It is a convenience rather than a prerequisite, and nobody needs to buy Arrow time in order to start the multi-engine rating.
What Do You Learn In The Airplane, And In What Order?
Five stages. The order is deliberate and it front-loads the part most people assume is a formality, because the ground material is where the checkride is won and the flying is where it is merely confirmed.
The Systems, Before The Airplane Moves
Fuel and crossfeed logic, the electrical layout, hydraulics, the propeller governors, the feathering mechanism, and the accumulator that brings a feathered blade back. Read the flight manual for the specific airframe rather than a generic summary, because the answer an examiner wants is the one printed in that book.
Flying It Normally
Taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise, circuit and landing, plus the gear and propeller flows until they run without thought. Two days for most people. The Seminole flies like an airplane and this is not where the difficulty is hiding.
The Asymmetric Case, Announced
Engine failures set up in advance, at altitude, so you can watch what the airplane does and feel how much rudder it takes to stop it. The point of announcing them is that you are learning the mechanism, not yet being tested on the response.
The Asymmetric Case, Unannounced
The same failures with the instructor choosing the moment. This is where the hours go and where the reflex is built, and it is the reason consecutive days beat spread-out weekends on this particular rating.
The Demonstration And The Approaches
The control demonstration flown high, with the FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook directing at least 3,000 feet of air beneath the manoeuvre, then approaches flown on one engine. After that, a rehearsal with a second instructor, then the practical test.
Why Are There No Performance Figures For This Airplane Here?
Because a number typed onto a web page is not the number you will fly. Speeds, weights and climb figures belong to one airframe, at one weight, on one day, and the only authority on them is that aircraft's own flight manual. We would rather be less useful on this page than confidently wrong in your cockpit.
The Rule We Apply, Stated Plainly
No V-speed, stall speed, climb rate, service ceiling or single-engine performance figure for any aircraft this school operates appears anywhere on this site. Where a figure is genuinely load-bearing we cite the regulation or the FAA handbook it comes from, and where it belongs to an airframe we point you at the flight manual instead.
- No V-speeds for our aircraft, on any page
- No stall or climb figures for named airframes
- Regulatory definitions cited to 14 CFR
- Airframe numbers cited to the flight manual
Why This Matters More On A Twin Than Anywhere Else
Because the numbers that matter most in a twin are the ones that move most. Single-engine climb performance is exquisitely sensitive to weight, to density altitude and to whether the failed propeller is feathered. At a field 802 feet above sea level where a hot September afternoon behaves like roughly 4,100, a published sea-level figure would be worse than no figure at all, because it would be reassuring.
The control speed moves too, and not always in the direction people assume. Gear position changes it. Weight and centre of gravity change it. A pilot who has memorised a number from a website and not read the conditions attached to it has memorised a fact about a different airplane on a different day.
What We Will Tell You
Everything that does not depend on the airframe. How the mechanism works and why. What the regulation says and where to read it. What the drill is and in what order. What the airplane is going to do to you when an engine quits, in terms of moments and drag rather than in terms of numbers we cannot stand behind.
And on the first morning, with the flight manual open on the table, the actual figures for the actual aircraft you are about to fly. That is where those numbers belong, and handing them over in that setting is teaching. Printing them on a marketing page is not.
What Is Different Inside A Twin?
Six things the airplane asks you to hold in your head that a single-engine trainer never did. None of them is difficult on its own. Together they are the reason the ground portion of this rating is longer than people expect.
Fuel, And The Crossfeed
Two systems that can be persuaded to feed each other, in a specific direction, under specific conditions. The oral question is rarely which tank feeds which engine. It is what happens when a crossfeed is selected the wrong way round.
The Electrical Arrangement
Two alternators, and buses that survive different failures. Knowing which services stay alive after which failure is a question with an exact answer in the flight manual, and examiners like exact answers.
Propeller Governors And Feathering
The mechanism that turns the blades edge-on and stops the rotation. Understanding how it is driven explains why feathering has a deadline rather than merely a procedure.
The Unfeathering Accumulator
What brings a feathered propeller back for a training restart. Small component, favourite oral question, and the reason a shut-down engine in training is not a one-way decision.
Landing Gear, And The Emergency Method
Retractable gear adds a flow, a warning system and an alternative extension procedure. All three are examined, and the alternative method is the one candidates forget.
The Flight Manual For That Airframe
Every number you actually need lives here rather than on this page. Bring it, read it, and be ready to say which page you read it on.
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 on your behalf. Ask it on day one, because the answer changes the briefing and it changes what the control demonstration is showing you.
Here is the mechanism, which is worth understanding either way. On a twin whose propellers turn the same direction, P-factor puts each engine's effective thrust line slightly outboard of its own centreline; on the right engine that means further from the fuselage. Lose the left engine and what remains pulls on the longer arm, producing the larger yawing moment. The left engine is then the critical one, and the certificated control speed is measured with it shut down.
Airplanes built with counter-rotating propellers bring both descending blades inboard, the asymmetry between the two failure cases disappears, and there is no critical engine at all. We would rather tell you where to look this up than tell you an answer you would then repeat to an examiner on our authority.
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 a fixed-price discovery flight in it. There is no hourly rate for this airplane on this site and there is not going to be one.
Multi-Engine Add-On
The rating, flown in this airplane, added to a private or a commercial certificate.
- ✓Seminole time flown to practical test standard
- ✓An instructor on every hour of it
- ✓Systems ground instruction for the oral
- ✓Every engine-out, feathering and control-demonstration exercise
- ✓The 61.63(c)(1) endorsement
- ✓Unchanged if you need longer than average
Multi-Engine Discovery Flight
A fixed-price first flight in this airplane with an instructor. You handle it, and the time is loggable.
- ✓Hands on the controls of the twin
- ✓Credited in full against a program you enrol in inside a day
- ✓Ask to see an engine failure at altitude
Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion and fully enclosed. Where the drills go when the weather takes the airplane away.
- ✓Never scrubbed for cloud or wind
- ✓Good for identification, flows and checklists
- ✓Weak on landings, and we say so
Airline Career Track
Every certificate and rating in one sequence, with this airplane as one phase of it.
- ✓Private, instrument, commercial, multi, instructor
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Nothing repriced at a phase boundary
Where Does The Twin Sit Among The Other Aircraft?
Six airframe types, each doing a job the others cannot. The Seminole is the only one that teaches asymmetric flight, and it is the last one most people meet.
Single-Engine Trainers
Cessna, Piper and Diamond airframes on the Standard private pilot program. Where almost everybody starts.
- ✓40 logged hours, 2 in the Redbird
- ✓The $179/hr wet rate applies to these airframes only
- ✓Books and materials included
Cirrus SR22 Turbo
The Premium program aircraft: glass cockpit throughout and a whole-airframe parachute system.
- ✓40 logged hours flown in the Cirrus
- ✓No hourly figure published for this airframe either
- ✓Glass from the first lesson
Piper Seminole
The twin. The only airplane here that can teach an engine failure worth the name.
- ✓Wing-mounted engines and feathering propellers
- ✓Complex: retractable gear and pitch control
- ✓Ten to fifteen hours in the ordinary case
What Does Owning The Twin Actually Buy You?
Availability, and a price that can be fixed. A school that charters its twin in from a third party is quoting against somebody else's rate card and scheduling against somebody else's diary, which is how a one-hour booking becomes a two-week wait and how a fixed price becomes an estimate with a footnote.
It also changes what maintenance looks like from your side. An aircraft giving flight instruction for hire falls under 14 CFR 91.409(b), which wants an annual or 100-hour inspection inside the preceding 100 hours of time in service before it may be used that way again. On an owned aircraft that inspection is scheduled around the training calendar rather than negotiated with a third party after the fact.
The honest limitation of a single twin is that it is a single twin. When it is in for inspection, twin flying stops for a few days, and saying so beats pretending to a redundancy the fleet does not have. What that means in practice is that inspections are planned around booked courses, and that the simulator absorbs the drills which do not need an airplane.
The Airplane Or The Simulator?
Both, for different things, and being precise about which is which saves money. The Redbird MCX is genuinely good at part of this rating and genuinely poor at another part, and we would rather say which than sell you simulator hours as though they were interchangeable.
Piper Seminole
The airplane the practical test is taken in, and the only place the asymmetric case is real.
Best foreverything that has to feel like the airplane
- Asymmetric HandlingReal
- LandingsReal
- Weather DependentYes
- Used For The Practical TestYes
- Priced AsPart of the $5,100 rating
Redbird MCX
Full-motion and fully enclosed, so it flies on days the airplane cannot.
Best forflows, checklists and failure recognition under load
- Asymmetric HandlingApproximate
- LandingsWeak, and we say so
- Weather DependentNo
- Used For The Practical TestNo
- Priced As$189 a session
Side By Side
| Piper Seminole | Redbird MCX | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine Failure Recognition | Real, and unannounced | Good, and repeatable |
| Rudder Load And Feel | Real | Approximate |
| Landings | Real | Weak |
| Cancelled By Weather | Sometimes | Never |
| Counts Toward The Practical Test | Yes | No |
| Published Price | Inside $5,100 | $189 a session |
What Should You Do Before Booking Time In This Airplane?
Fly it once. For $499 the multi-engine discovery flight gives you the controls, an instructor alongside, and a logbook entry afterwards, and ten minutes is usually enough to tell whether a second engine reads to you as an asset or as workload. That is a question no amount of reading settles, including reading this page.
Ask for two specific things on that flight. First, an engine failure at altitude, set up and announced, so you can watch the yaw develop and feel how much rudder it takes to stop. Second, the flight manual open on the table afterwards, so the numbers we deliberately do not publish here are shown to you against the airframe they belong to.
If the answer is that you want the rating, the fee comes off the program price when you enrol within a day. If the answer is that you do not, you have bought an hour of instruction in an interesting airplane and learned something true about yourself for a great deal less than $5,100.
What Is Verifiable About This Airplane And The People Who Teach In It?
Five things, each confirmable by asking a direct question and expecting a direct answer. None of them is a claim about how much we care.
The Twin Belongs To The Operation
Owned and maintained in-house rather than chartered in for the morning. Because it is used to give instruction for hire, it carries the annual or 100-hour inspection regime that rule imposes before it may be used that way again.
14 CFR 91.409(b)Make-And-Model Hours Behind Every Instructor Who Teaches In It
14 CFR 61.195(f) keeps an instructor out of multiengine rating instruction until five hours as pilot in command of that exact make and model are already logged. Ask how many people on a staff clear it in this specific airplane.
14 CFR 61.195(f)Airframe Types On The Ramp
Cessna 162, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and this Piper Seminole. The twin is one part of a fleet rather than the whole of it, which is what lets a training career happen in one place.
Live aircraft recordsPerformance Figures Published For This Airplane
None, deliberately. Speeds, weights and climb figures belong to one airframe on one day and live in its flight manual. We will show you them there, with the book open, rather than printing them here.
Flight manual for that airframePrices Held Behind A Form
None. $5,100 and $499 are both on this page, with what they include and exclude printed alongside them.
Published in fullWhat We Are Not Telling You About This Airplane
The Seminole is one of six airframe types Airline Pilot Flight School owns and maintains in-house rather than chartering in on the morning of a lesson.
No performance data. No V-speeds, no stall speeds, no climb rates, no single-engine service ceiling, and no weight or balance figures. Those belong to a specific airframe at a specific weight on a specific day, and the only source we will point you at is the flight manual carried in the aircraft itself. A number republished from memory onto a web page is exactly the kind of thing that gets repeated in a cockpit.
We also do not assert the propeller rotation of our specific airframe on this page. Whether a given aircraft has counter-rotating propellers, and therefore whether it has a critical engine at all, is recorded in its type certificate data sheet and its flight manual. Ask on the first morning and read the answer in the book.
The twin cannot be rented. No rate card for aircraft hire is published on this site for any airframe, and the operation sells training rather than aircraft time. Training happens at Van Nuys Airport under part 61. No pass rate or graduate count is published here, this is not an airline and is not owned by one, and nothing above offers you a job.
What People Ask About Training In The Twin
One thing. It is where the multi-engine rating gets flown, and it is the only aircraft here capable of teaching asymmetric flight, because it carries its engines out on the wings with propellers that feather. The rating flown in it is $5,100, fixed at enrolment.
There is not one, and there will not be one. No rate card for aircraft hire is published on this site for any airframe. The twin is available as the $5,100 rating and as the $499 fixed-price discovery flight, which is a flight rather than a rate. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries no hourly figure here either.
We do not publish it, and we would rather explain why than guess. A control speed belongs to a specific airframe under specific conditions, it is affected by gear position, weight and centre of gravity, and the authority on it is that aircraft's flight manual. You will be shown the figure with the book open on the first morning.
That depends on the specific airframe, and it is recorded in its type certificate data sheet and its flight manual rather than on a web page. It matters, because an airplane with counter-rotating propellers has no critical engine at all. Ask on day one and read the answer in the book.
No, and that is the point of using it. Ordinary handling takes most people about two days, which is exactly what you want, because the training time you have should be spent on engine failures rather than on learning to land an unfamiliar airplane. The difficulty in this rating is not where people expect it.
Two reasons. It makes the airplane complex, so the flows and the systems workload match what a twin actually imposes. And gear position affects the control speed: legs hanging below the fuselage lend the rudder help that disappears when they come up, which is why the certification conditions specify gear retracted.
No. The operation sells training rather than aircraft time, and there is no rental rate card on this site for any airframe. If you want time in the twin, the routes are the $5,100 rating and the $499 discovery flight, and both are fixed prices rather than rates.
Not as a requirement. A pilot who has already flown the Arrow arrives with complex operations behind them, which takes a little load off the first days in the twin, but 14 CFR 61.63(c) asks for nothing of the sort and nobody needs to buy Arrow time to start the multi-engine rating.
Ten to fifteen in the ordinary case, with instrument-current pilots flying consecutive days finishing nearer the bottom of it. No regulation sets a floor, because 14 CFR 61.63(c)(3) lifts the training-time requirement for an added class rating, so this is an observation about people rather than a rule.
Twin flying pauses for a few days, and we plan inspections around booked courses rather than around convenience. The Redbird MCX absorbs the drills that do not need an airplane. One twin means one twin, and we would rather state that plainly than imply a redundancy the fleet does not have.
They are separate signatures collected in the same airplane. Ground and flight training in a complex airplane, a finding of proficiency, and one logbook endorsement are what 14 CFR 61.31(e) asks for before anybody acts as pilot in command of such an aircraft. The 61.63(c)(1) endorsement is a different thing, covering the class rating practical test.
Book the $499 multi-engine discovery flight and ask the instructor for an engine failure at altitude, then ask for the flight manual afterwards. Ten minutes with your hands on the controls settles a question that two thousand words cannot, and enrolling inside a day takes the whole fee off the program price.
An Hour In The Airplane, With The Flight Manual Open Afterwards
Book the multi-engine discovery flight, ask for an engine failure at altitude, and ask to see the flight manual when you get back. Everything this page deliberately does not print is in that book, and it will be shown to you against the airframe it belongs to.
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 →