I’m posting this as a reminder to myself why I shouldn’t get a Lancair whenever I get too carried away by their awesome performance. The two airplanes I’ve considered for a long time are the Lancair 360 Mk-II and the Lancair IV-P with a TSIO-550. From the stats it looks like the Lancair ES is the only sane choice.

But one can never outperform a stat in the long run. I have enough flying friends who have paid the ultimate price while trying. This is not a cynical comment, just reality.

Lukas Beyer – a good flying friend of mine and competent pilot with aerobatics and sailplane experience died in a Lancair 235 crash with an engine failure. Life is more boring since then without him.

Excerpt from the NTSB accident investigation of the Lancair Propjet crash that killed the Micron CEO in Feb 2012 in Boise, Idaho.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2012/02/micron-ceo-steve-appleton-went-down.html

The following breakdown was provided by the Lancair Owners and Builders Organization (LOBO) and gives the best estimate of the accident rate for the Lancair fleet (see figure 03 in the public docket for the graph):

Model           : Flying,
                :      Accidents, 
                :         %Accidents, 
                :             Fatal, 
Model           :                %Fatal Accidents of Accd.
===========================================================
 Lancair 200/235: 103  32 31% 16 50%
 Lancair 320/360: 301  76 25% 28 37%
 Lancair ES     :  96   4  4%  3 75%
 Lancair IV/IV-P: 240  51 21% 27 53%
 Lancair IV-TP  :  57  15 26% 11 73%
 Legacy         : 121  27 22% 14 52%
 Lancair Evol.  :  50   2  1%  0  0% - too new
============================================================
 Totals         : 922 207 22% 99  9%

MrM., Don’t buy a Lancair! – Live long, live happy.