10 FAILED General Aviation Airplanes

so in the past I've done videos about some of general aviation greatest airplanes and if you haven't seen those videos yet be sure to check them out but now it's time to look at some airplanes that didn't quite make the cut and before we get started I just wanted to say that there are different reasons for considering an airplane has failed some may have failed economically while others lacked in the design but I want to look at these failures as a step towards a better airplane and keep in mind a lot of these companies are still around today and are very successful so that being said let's take a look at 10 failed general aviation airplanes coming in is our first airplane we have the Beechcraft starship 2000 its goal is to be a fast and efficient airplane that could dominate the turboprop market designed by the legendary Burt Rutan in the early 1980s the starship featured a canard configuration and was the first general aviation airplane to have a modern all glass cockpit despite how awesome it looked the starship would eventually become a flop it's performance wasn't competitive with a330 not cruise and a lower useful load than other airplanes in the market at the time it was made from composite materials which was new to Beechcraft in the design ran into a corrosion issue with the metal mesh in the wings in the end the starship was too expensive for Beechcraft to support so tragically Beechcraft destroyed most of the unsold aircraft and to be perfectly honest this failure kind of hits home because when I was a kid I was lucky enough to fly in a starship and here's the last picture I've seen of it only 53 starship were produced between 1986 and 1995 with only less than 15 sold today there are only five starships that are air worthy and it sure is a shame because this is one of the coolest planes out there brought to you by Bill leer from the famous Learjet the leer fan was designed in the 1970s to be a modern fast and efficient turboprop like the starship it featured two pratt & whitney engines but in this case both engines drove a single four bladed propeller it was built almost entirely of graphite and Kevlar composite materials and it was designed to carry a total of eight people with the cruise of around 300 knots unfortunately bill year passed away before the first flight and the final design ended up being much heavier than originally planned his wife Moyer then took leadership and led the team to have the first flight flying he'd be very very proud of this aircraft because this is the best one it's nice and solid it's built beautifully however due to bankruptcy and design flaws the Lear fan was cancelled after just three aircraft were made today the three Lear fans are on display in different museums in Seattle Dallas and Oklahoma City here's a great clip from a mini documentary about the Lear fan program I sure wish there was one flying today the aircraft that is now flown is not Bill Ayers airplane it looks like it is not but he had intended would be they said from the same designer of the world's smallest jet came the B d-10 designed by Jim BD throughout the mid 1980s to early 1990s the goal of the beauty 10 was to be the world's first kit-built supersonic airplane it's intended top speed was a whopping Mach 1.4 but its actual top speed was closer to Mach point 8 3 the entire project was rocky from the start and its development was continued under the company's Fox 10 and later Peregrine flight international only 5vt tens were ever built and three of them underwent catastrophic structural failures thus crashing and killing the pilot in all three cases the BD 10 was designed not only with performance in mine but also for safety reliability durability and just plain old-fashioned quality today only two examples remain and both are unflyable [Music] from the British designer Ian chick Chester miles came the CMC leopard the leopard was a light personal business jet that had impressive performance numbers it featured a pressurized cabin top speed of over 460 knots and a range of 1726 miles its control surfaces were unique due to it using Taylor ons instead of ailerons the first prototype flew in 1988 and the second flew in 1996 development was slow and despite it being a great little jet production was stopped after the second prototype chief designer Ian chick Chester miles passed away in 2009 and further development was brought to an end with his death the two prototypes remain in different museums in England this new engine offers a future of much lower costs lower noise levels and lower fuel consumption all characteristics you thinking for the new century so now that you've made it this far here's a friendly reminder to subscribe to my channel your views likes comments and subscriptions keep me going okay let's get back to airplanes during the mid-2000s the very light jet movement was gaining speed and the D jet was diamonds response to the public demand the featured a single Williams F J 33 turbofan jet engine and had a design crew speed of 315 knots while carrying a total of five people the D jet seemed like it was going to be a successful design however diamond ran into issues in funding and the program was placed on the shelf after just three prototypes are built there is a slight hope that the D jet may come back in the future as a Chinese company who owns a large share of Diamond stated that they are reassessing the program but if you ask me I'd say it's unlikely but I would love to see it back in action [Music] while we're on the subject of very light jets the piper jet was Piper's vision of a single-engine jet the piper jet was designed off the same fuselage cross-section as Piper's matrix and Malibu propeller-driven aircraft its intended cruise speed was 360 knots while carrying a total of 7 people the original piper jet proof-of-concept had a successful flight in July of 2008 and was later rebranded as the piper jet Altair after some design changes however the Altair never came to fruition and the project was halted in 2011 due to economic reasons another very light jet bites the dust [Music] also in the mid to late 2000s aircraft companies joined a movement to create lights more airplanes that would appeal to pilots that did not have a medical certificate the Cessna Skycatcher was Cessnas response to the light sport movement and would feature simplicity with modern technology perfect for flight schools a total of 275 were built between 2009 and 2013 and its intended sale price was supposed to be $100,000 or less well like with many things in aviation the actual price started to increase drastically up to 149 thousand dollars this lowered the demand for the sky catcher especially when a pilot can purchase an old airplane for a fraction of the cost the sky catcher program was halted at the end of 2013 but many remain in service around flight schools today [Music] mooney was another company that wanted to enter the aviation training market with its m10 the moody m10 was a three seat carbon-fiber airplane intended to be the trainer of the future the featured sleek looks in that iconic backwards mooney tail its intended top speed was a very respectable 180 knots although the real numbers are hard to come by according to Mooney the m10 was mainly just a proof-of-concept which would then make way for a future airplane design some also speculate that the cirrus sr20 has a stronghold in the market for airplanes similar to the m10 so perhaps the economic outlook for Mooney wasn't looking good the m10 project was stopped in 2017 but Mooney has stated that the Anton provided a good education for further development of their aircraft [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] from the company that brought the popular unlimited aerobatic extra three hundred airplanes came the passenger class extra 400 and the turboprop extra 500 both airplanes are made from composite materials and are pressurized the piston extra four hundred features a 325 horsepower continental engine and can cruise at around 200 knots on the other hand the turbine extra 500 features a 450 horsepower rolls-royce turboprop and could cruise at 225 knots and despite being a good design the piston extra 400 was expensive to manufacture and in the end only 27 were made probably for reasons similar to its piston counterpart production of the extra 500 ended in 2015 even though that landing gear is kind of weird it would be nice to see these back in production [Music] [Music] for our last airplane we have one of the most unique designs yet with the atom a 500 the atom a 500 is a twin-engine push-pull configuration airplane built mostly from carbon fiber and features a pressurized cabin it could cruise at 220 knots and has a ceiling of 25,000 feet it's sleek design definitely catches the eye and the airplane was even featured in the 2006 movie Miami Vice however the design of the a500 may have been doomed from the start as described by a Reddit user who was employed by Adam Aircraft there were serious quality issues with a prototype build of the airplane in the end the payload of the atom a500 was grossly underestimated and came out being a whopping 1200 pounds overweight there were 5 a 500 sold but now they are running into issues finding parts there have been mentions of try and air space doing a complete redesign of the airplane but I see it unlikely of going back into production despite its failure I like the looks of the plane and would love to see it flying [Applause] thanks so much for watching and if you enjoyed this video make sure to hit those like and subscribe buttons also leave a comment below about any airplane that you think might belong on this list and until next time blue skies and safe flying [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FloridaFlying

Views: 796,978

Rating: 4.8288107 out of 5

Keywords: 10, failed, airplanes, top, ten, plane, planes, aircraft, aviation, matt, guthmiller, mojogrip, flightchops, worst, bad, crash, accident, aviation101, list, helicopter, beechcraft, starship, lear, jet, learjet, fan, bede, bd5, bd10, supersonic, experimental, leopard, personal, private, piper, diamond, djet, d-jet, cessna, 162, 150, skycatcher, sky, flying, florida, floridaflying, mooney, m20, m10, adam, a500, extra, 300, 400, 500, pratt, whitney, fail, failarmy, best, greatest, air, rutan, burt, canard, pedro, saldarriaga, citation, modern, crazy, airplane, death

Id: NIkGBYZPDiU

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2019