Page 10 - February 2015 Volume 19 Number 2

Thanks to that and other initiatives, the MU-2 has now earned the honor of having the lowest accident rate in its category over the last half-dozen years. It just took some respect for the aircraft and proper training in how to avoid carrying bad habits into its operation.Yes, there is a 2006 Special Federal Air Regulation 108 for the MU-2, requiring specific initialand recurrent training to fly the airplane, but it’s mostly common sense requirements, such as a functioning autopilot for single-pilot IFR, and PIC standards that would be required by insurance companies in any event. An FAA review of the aircraft’s ability to meet its Part 23 certification standards had turned up no issues. Thus, the agency imposed stiffer pilot training, and that has apparently worked.A Place To GoRecently, we stopped at the Intercontinental Jet Service Corporation complex on the northwest side of Tulsa International Airport, where the normal contingent of MU-2s was on the ramp. More importantly, a half-dozen were in the shops, getting upgrades and phase service. ICJS president Dennis Braner and Director of Operations Mark James gave me the tour of the sprawling facility, established in 1987. Although the company does work on other airplanes, like the Piaggio Avanti we saw in the hangar and a Beech Starship that was coming in during the next week, it is noted for being the go-to place for MU-2 service.According to Mark James, about 270 MU-2s are currently in the fleet, about evenly split between the short-body and long-body models. The longer MU-2G, with two extra seats, maingear pods and aft-fuselage strakes, first appeared in 1970 and was subsequently identified with J, L & N letters before winding up as the Marquise in 1979. The original short-body airplanes, with a sleeker fuselage that folds the maingear behind the cabin, are suffixed by B, D, F, K, M and P, finishing as the Solitaire. But, officially, these are all MU-2B airplanes, with dash-numbers to show various iterations.The Honeywell TPE-331 engines on the MU-2 are most commonly8 • TWIN & TURBINEFEBRUARY 2015