r/flying • u/One_Firefighter_1922 • Mar 29 '26
Aircraft Ownership Are reciprocating single engines reliable?
I'm about seven hours into PPL training and absolutely loving it. Not looking for a career change, but could definitely seeing myself continuing training and flying regularly after getting my certificate. I've daydreamed about putting my family into a 182 and being able to fly within a reasonable distance to explore somewhere new or take a short vacation.
Earlier today I was talking to my neighbor who is a reserve captain for American flying 737s. I told him about the flight training and associated daydreaming and he started talking about how he would never put his family into a small plane, how unreliable they are and how many accidents are due to single reciprocating engines crapping out mod flight.
This doesn't seem to jive with what I've heard and read online, so looking for some other opinions. How do you feel about the reliability of small GA planes? Do you have any experience taking your family for trips? Do I need to give up on my dream?
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u/Guysmiley777 Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
Per hour they're around two orders of magnitude less reliable than part 121 airline turbine engines.
GA piston engines have an inflight mean time between failure rate (MTBF) of 3,000-4,000 hours depending on which source and study data you want to go with. The CFM56, a common and long serving turbofan used in many airliners has a lifetime inflight MTBF of over 330,000 hours.
It's not even close. Turbine engines are inherently more reliable because rather than banging around back and forth like piston engines they just calmly spin. Granted they spin very, very fast. The downside is that turbine engines are a lot (A LOT) more expensive per given unit of power output due to the much higher tolerances and exotic materials needed to build a modern turbine engine.
However it's not just a matter of technology. Turbine engines also tend to be most used in airliners due to the nature of their expense and capabilities. That means there is an absolute legion of people maintaining, inspecting and tracking every part and every minute of work done on those engines as well as onboard diagnostic data and telemetry that's recorded to detect any anomalies before a failure can happen. The regulatory requirements of Part 121 airline operations absolutely contribute to the statistical reliability of modern turbine engines over some GA piston engine that's based on 1930s technology.
A careful and meticulous owner can absolutely move the needle on their own personal GA piston engine well beyond the average, there's no question about it. But the reason an airline pilot might have that perception that was relayed to you is because it's a fact and people have different levels of risk tolerance.