B1900 vs. Metroliner
 

Does anyone know what the main differnces between the metroliner and the B1900 are(both 19 seat pressurized turboprop in passenger config.)? The 19's are still being used for commuters (domestic)but you dont see too many metro's anymore. I know some of the regionals used the metros back in the day and replaced them with saab, Bombar. etc. Is it age, efficiency, power, reliability, availability?? Just curious:)

-Bons

Im pretty sure the reason was safety and reliability. My understanding is the Metro is a handful to fly and didnt have the best of safety records, although that could be because of any number of factors.

The Metro a great airplane but defiantly a handful to fly, single pilot that is. The 1900 is basically a stretched Kingair, Which makes the transition very easy for previous beech pilots. The metro on the other hand is a brand new design. The Metro is a little faster, but the beech climbs better. Take your pick.

The Metro is basically a stretched Merlin.

A Metroliner's manueverability is also not as good as a 1900. The ailerons on the Metroliner did not reach all the way to the wing tips. In fact, it was about 5-6 feet short. On heavy crosswind days, there was some real work involved.

Ah....the San Antonio Sewer Pipe....... mostly being used in cargo ops now although I am sure there are a few here and there still being used in pax config. Saw several down in Haiti last time I was down that way in January.

Ah, the memories. We used to say that Mickey Mouse wore an Ed Swearingen wristwatch. A lot of little things would go wrong, and the Garrett (Honeywell) engines were a bit harder for a less experienced pilot to operate properly. It actually wasn't that hard to fly, and it would perform. It certainly wasn't comfortable for passengers to sit in.

Ultimately I don't think most of these factors mattered all that much; it's probable the 1900 was a bit less expensive to purchase and operate, and that's all that'll count to a suit.

I personally think the Metro is a better designed machine than the 1900.
But...
You have to have a good MX to handle those Garrett TPE-331s.
They are more temperamental than the PT-6 and also sip gas as compared to the PT-6.
The biggest draw back to the ole Metro was the noise....those Garretts really scream.

Bearskin Airlines in Ontario Canada uses 16 Metro's. Saw two at Ottawa's MacDonald Cartier International Airport

Metro, the weed eater, sewer pipe, etc. etc.

Weed eater term came from strange transient impulses to the hydraulic steering, say during the takeoff or landing roll...made the pilot look silly since there was no way to prove it happened by itself.

Sewer pipe, well it is a small round tube....

The brakes are crap. Static run-up? Good luck staying in one place.

Sort of spindly gear with small high pressure tires which was fun on wet, or snowy and of course wind swept runways.

It has the infamous SAS system (stick pusher). Went off on me on short final, it pushed at up to 260 lbs for 7 minutes, couldn't disable it.

If loaded it would pitch hunt above FL190.

The ailerons were never relocated out further on the Metro III from the shorter wing-span of the II because they didn't want to bother, thus leading to the high roll effort.

Very annoying pitch trim in motion beeper. MEL stickers fit perfectly over the small speakers.

To its benefit:
It really is only annoying loud on the ground, and then just outside, not inside.

It would do 280 kts and carry 19 passengers 400 nm easy with good reserves and burn something like 450 lbs an hour above FL220. Good 7.0 PSI.

It was sturdy as all get out, maybe over built. The San Antonio people would brag that when one crashed in afield the wings stayed on after hitting something. Not what I wanted to hear, I'd rather have the wings frangible. Fun to fly, in its way. Once you got 100 hours in it and understood it, it was fun to fly and certainly was a great stick skills builder.

Never flew the 1900, so I just don't know how groovy it is or isn't.

Metro.......an evil, bastard device, or, as Ernest Gann would say, a near successful attempt at creating the Infernal Machine. The IIs couldn't carry a full load and go anywhere. It was built like a tank, I'll give it that, but it was such misery for pax and crew alike. Most of my tainted experience with the ***** was with -3 engines and stories that would curl your hair. Especially out of high altitude airports.

A good friend lost a prop blade one night and twisted the whole engine into the fuselage where the two remaining blades slapped a basketball sized hole in the fuselage. The only empty seat in the airplane was next to the hole. One tube of the engine mount was all that was left holding the engine on and he couldn't keep the wings level below about 135 kts. Got her down on the long runway at MCI without so much as a scratch on his passengers. A remarkable display of airmanship!

The 1900s have more power, can carry more weight, but burn more fuel.

The Metro gets good gas mileage with it's direct drive engines, but they usually use a GPU to get started. There's a trade off between fuel saved and outstation GPU costs.

Pilots aren't the only one's who are more familiar with Beech products, experienced Metro mechanics are harder to find also.

I always suspected that the design of the 1900 was always intended to make up for the Metro's shortcomings.

I was just offered a job flying Metros. You guys arent instilling much confidence.

Key lime? :eek:

No... I opted not to work for Key Lime when they told me I would get my 10 hours rest at my outstation instead of at home...

Here is a question. On a plane like a Metro or 1900 that doesnt require two pilots, and you are not flying passengers, just boxes. Is there a way to log SIC time? They claim that their OPSPECS specifically state the requirement for two pilots... what say you?

Take the Metro stories with a grain of salt, you can find the same individual oddities with Beeches.
It was 5000+ hours of some of the funnest flying I've done personally.
Generally the guys who liked the Metro were guys who liked fast bikes/cars and were into hand flying.
The guys that didn't like it, in general, were the ones who wanted to relax/be quiet and read or not fly.
The 3/4 were much better powered/developed than the 2 was and most of the 2's are retired.

If the ops specs say two pilots are required, you can log SIC.
This is the way it worked at Skywest. In fact, Skywest's ops spec
changed from single pilot (ferry flights) to always dual pilot due to an "exuberant" guy....
He was SP ferrying a Metro and decided to do some aerobatics.
Fell out of roll and overstressed it on the pullout.
It was caught after the first flight of the day, yeah with pax, and ferried to PSP.
The Swearingen engineers came out from San Antonio and measured the deflection and estimated 6g.
They pulled the skin and the spar returned to the normal displacement and they simply re-skinned the wings and put it back out.
I flew that plane many times afterward and it was fine. They are tough and just require a some skill and attention/maint. to fly well.

The stories could go on and on for pages, good times.
It's a fast, no BS, pilot's airplane. 248 (kts) to the gate was the saying for the outer marker.
If you take it seriously and respect it, it's a kick in the pants.
Oh yeah, keep your finger ready on the nose wheel steering button......heh

If you don't mind sharing, who's offering the Metro Position? The only other operator I know of (ameriflight) starts new guys off in Pistons or Be99s.

FAA usually says no from what I hear.

I've rolled a few airplanes but I'd never have the guts to roll the Metro. The ailerons could be disconnected for a week before anyone found out.

I've often thought of finding an old air frame in the dump somewhere, dragging it to Oshkosh and charging guys $5 a swing with a sledge hammer.

Be careful with the cross flow switch, it's between two identical fuel shutoff switches. The cockpit was designed long before the phrase "user friendly" was invented. It will help if you are 5'4" like Ed was. 1257 is right, it'll make a man of ya, along with some hearing loss. I just hated to see the paying passengers in such misery.

I doubt if there's a functional autopilot.

The III's and the later versions are much "better" than the II's, I'm glad I never flew a II with standard engines.

One other fun factoid was that some of the III's had a provision for AWI alcohol water injection. We flew dash 11's, rated at 1100 shp but I think the extra 100 shp of that was AWI. Never used or carried it, but I guess some did. The earlier II's or straight metro's could carry a small jato bottle in the tail cone. That tells you something there.

I'm not badmouthing the plane, the III's did fine on one engine, at least the ones that grossed at 14,500, some of them go up to 16,000 lbs though.

Later versions had the SRL system too, single red-line limiter. Not easy to explain or understand, and if you MEL it it really is a mysterious experience to avoid torching the engine.

I am 5'9" and found the plane comfortable enough for 6 hours of flying a day (with stops). The passengers, well....

The operator I flew them for had great maintenance, which is a must, otherwise you may have surprises. One day a airplane came into the hangar from Europe that they bought. Dual FD's and a auto-pilot. This seemed to be a great leap forward but alas, they tore that stuff out.

It's still a fun plane to fly and skills builder and 248 to the marker was quite doable. Single pilot I never did, but I guess it can be done (I'd pull the SAS CB's though, I am spooked by that). Single pilot w/o an auto-pilot....shouldn't be allowed in my opinion.

Correct, the dash 11's were rated 1000 w/o water and 1100 w/water.
Your guess that some carried water is an understatement.

It was required to have for heavy dash 11 S/E take off performance in the summer
at places like SLC/SGU/LAS/PHX/FLG/PGA etc.....fired it every day in the summer.
The stations had large carts, with hand pumps usually, to fill the nose tank
to its 16 gallon capacity. Never timed it, but the consumption was fairly fast.
Skywest had one fail at LAS on a 110+deg. day at liftoff with the plane heavy and
the airplane settled back down for the abort (25R).
It felt like more than 200hp total and would also allow
the airplane to indicate 300kt @10K ft. if fired in flight.
(the euro Vne was 300kt. due to lesser restrictions on the plexi center window)
The water would also allow easily getting to the 31K ft ceiling, which was difficult without it.(but not cert. for)
It was def. more than 200hp total, but they just called it that.
(Imho they didn't want pilots to know they had a +400hp lever....heh, it was fun)
The earlier JATO's were fun to fire on the ground at the hangar when their expiration date had passed.
As far as a useful S/E second segment climb device (why they were there for cert.).....not so much.

Was this a II? I reckon a III is just as strong, but the extended tips would have been damaged as well. I don't doubt the story at all, though.

I remember 246 knots, actually (III), but that doesn't rhyme with "gate". :)

The steering either worked or just quit working in my experience. All the "weedeater" type deviations I heard of were pilot-induced (I never had one myself, fortunately). Pilot-induced is actually misleading; it was one of the most user unfriendly - and unforgiving - systems I've ever seen.

Another thrown prop story happened to a Metroliner out west. Pretty much same results, except with the prop off (which also penetrated rated the cabin lacerating a passengers foot) it bent the engine/cowl seriously upward and bent the wing to a higher angle of attack...instantly the engine flamed out, rolled, and the other engine flamed out, the airplane was in a something like a flat stall, and it would stall any time it was below about 150 kts, but they were directly over an airport, where it was dead sticked in. Phew!

On to tamer events...during a factory tour in San Antonio we were asked if we wanted to see their RD hangar. OK. The PR guy picked up a big stick and we asked what it was for, "rattlesnakes" and proceeded to cut through a field. Inside was a Metroliner with PT6's on it. They didn't bother to certify that because customers didn't like the fact that when a passenger came down the stairs they would walk straight into the prop. That's the sort of "engineering" thinking that sometimes went into their airplanes. Fairchild was also involved in the SAAB SF340 project (that's where the F in SF comes from) but bailed when they thought there wasn't a market for it, so SAAB went it alone. Maybe a good thing.

The aerobatic metro was a III, they might have also replaced the tips, not sure.

Yup, 246 was it but the 248 to the gate just stuck during the go fast times.

Due to the surfeit of Metroliner stories compared with a lack of similar tales from 1900 drivers it appears the Metroliner wins the prize, although it is unclear as to what the value of the prize is.

For whatever it is worth some of the more successful companies nowadays owe some of their success to operating Metroliners; Skywest, Comair, Horizon, and I believe Air Wisconsin.

It is Berry Aviation. They have a 135 charter op that does car part hauling like IFL group does. They are looking for 2 FO's and a Capt at SDF and some crew for San Marcos. I am still doing the math, but I am pretty sure I wont be able to do it. They pay a little better than the airlines, but not by much.

The JATO, IIRC, was for FIRST segment climb since the burn time was only slightly longer than the gear retract time. Standing joke was that the real advantage was the smoke would mark the spot where you went down.:)

Interesting comments about using the water for anything other then take-off?
Even with a full 16 gallons, I can't imagine it would last long enough to do anything but get you into trouble at 31K?

We were taught in training that the old JATO (never got to fly the II) was a second segment climb cert. but
wasn't there for the cert. so it's relative to the instructor we had.

The 31K non-pax (non-oxygen) ceiling was a true ceiling in the sense that
it couldn't maintain 100fpm above it. (temp dependent)
But the plane was stable and maintained 31K with the conditions we flew it in.
To expedite getting up there (above 30K, climb was very slow) we'd fire water
from 30K to 31K (approx. 45 sec.) and then maintain a stable 31K without issue.

If you add up all the kludges, fixes, improvements, and down right wacky features the Metroliner has it all comes out as a real Rube Goldberg contraption that these days would be laughed at by certification authorities. The kind of laughed at when soda comes out of your nose laughed at.

Still, a fun plane. Aside from the SAS going off and trying to smite thee, I never had a mechanical.

I have over 1600 hours in "The Tube" and I love it! Everyone on the ramp knows when I am arriving by seeing them cover their ears! I have only had a couple of "oh crap!" moments. But that goes with any airplane. I've had one gear emergency, and the NWS failing on me on roll out and taking me hard right almost into the weeds. It is fun airplane and it keeps one on their toes.

Sorry for the thread drift but having been involved with the launch customer, it is a subject close to my heart, Fairchild wanted to do everything "on the cheap" which ended in divorce. They pushed the CT-7 when Saab wanted the Pratt. They were opposed to the avionics and wanted no glass and far less quality.
[IMG]http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/m.../SF340078a.jpg[/IMG]

Pics or it didn't happen :) Not sure what kind of steroids your Metro's were on but I never got an empty one above 250 or know anyone else who has. You would depressurize between 30 and 31 just to get the extra 1000 feet?

Well, now you do know people who have.
Many of us did when ferrying them back to the lessor after retiring the fleet. (50 Metros)
Going as high as possible was encouraged for the tailwind/fuel savings on the 4.5hr. flight to Springfield.

The oxygen comment was that the plane was certified to 25K with pax and 31K without pax.
That was for the time and capacity of the oxygen tank to go from 25K to 10K with pax for certification.
It had nothing to do with climbing to 31K with no pax on board or using water.

Climbing a III to FL250 with a full load/gross wt takeoff on wasn't a problem at all in the winter. I am sure it could have gone easily higher. Summertime, fully loaded, it was 17,000 to 22,000 or so. Now the SAAB, at least with the A version with 1735 shp CT-7's when loaded in the summer sometimes we'd just quit the climb at 13,000 ft - a complete dog. I wonder what the B or B+ would have done. The CT7's, while they had their (major) teething problems, were quite fuel efficient. For its day the SAAB was pretty advanced. Has anyone ever noticed how SAAB cars faired under GM? Lot's of these company marriages don't work out so well.

The bleeds automatically close when the AWI switch is turned on, thus the cabin would climb at the rate air could escape out the cabin for the 45 seconds you said it took to climb from 30 to 31. I just thought that seemed a bit odd just to climb an extra thousand feet. I was just kidding about the pics (thats what the smily face was for).

True, I forgot about the bleeds closing with the water on
(guess they didn't want 60/40 methanol air....lol) but yeah
the cabin would spike during that time. Honestly spiking
cabins and Metroliners always seemed to go hand in hand.
We could never get the the perfect ldg. alt. dialed because each
controller seemed to be different. Think I actually do have an old photo
with the F/O pointing at the altimeter at 310.......I'll try to find it.

heh, found it, along with some other, uh, interesting ferry shots......
I'll post the 310 one later, the others will have to wait for career maintenance....

Well, yeah, especially when feathered. :D

ROTFL!!

I never flew the II, but apparently there was a deterioration problem with the early TPE331 engines. 900 HP when new; somewhere south of 800 at hot section time. I'm told the JATO's were there to address that issue; use 'em when you need 'em. This is all hearsay; take it for what it's worth. :)