Patrick Dougherty in front of his 1983 Cessna 414A
Patrick Dougherty of El Reno, Oklahoma, has owned four aircraft to date that he flies for business and personal use. The 1983 Cessna 414A that Doughtery currently flies is not the first aircraft that he’s owned, nor is it his first 400-series twin Cessna.
“I have wanted to fly since I was a little kid but didn’t have an opportunity until I was in my 20s. And it wasn’t until I was 32 that I went out and bought a [Cessna] Cardinal, because I figured if I owned a plane – then I would have to finish up the license. Right?” Dougherty recalled.
The CEO of Dougherty Forest Manufacturing, a manufacturer of forestry equipment for vegetation management, quickly learned how aviation could serve his business.
“The Cardinal is simple, not super-fast (about 130 knots), but it was a great airplane, and I loved it. I bought it personally, but eventually had the business acquire the airplane and used it as a tool. We would go to a lot of tradeshows and as I was driving, it would gnaw at me the things I could be doing and the time I would be wasting on the road. The plane was a time machine and just what I was looking for.”
Dougherty would fly the plane to tradeshows and meet customers regionally. He began thinking about what aircraft would come next and considered several options before settling on a twin.
“The business was going pretty rapidly, so I bought a 414A. First, I leased some other twins, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really a next step up, with pressurization, two engines, and all these other great things. It opened up my eyes to real business aviation,” he said.
“The 414A I got was a pretty economical purchase, which is never a good thing in aviation. I ended up painting it, putting a panel in, and doing some other things. But the problem was when I bought it, it had 7,300 hours, so it was a little bit tired. History wise, it had gone all the way to Australia and back and sometimes wear and tear can’t be fixed. It was a good plane that I trusted decently, but I had some changes in business and sold the aircraft in 2015.”
While Dougherty acknowledges that the new Cirrus SR22 he purchased was a good aircraft, it was apparent that the single-engine piston was a step back personally. He planned to get back to the speed and legs he had lost when selling the twin Cessna.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to go back to a 414, but am going to find a lower time airplane’ and did an exhaustive search of those on the market at the time. Rather than purchasing it on looks or any of that, I went through the purchase history for every plane, and its whole history – down to the engines and other things,” he said.
After regularly scouring listings on all of the aircraft sales resources, Dougherty found an aircraft that appeared that it could be a diamond in the rough. It sounded like a good option, but it didn’t look that way in the pictures.
414A after purchase
“My plane only had 5,100 hours on the airframe, and I knew all the shops that had worked on it before, but it didn’t really look that good in the photos. But I thought if the numbers worked, we would paint it or something to make it more aesthetically pleasing,” Dougherty noted.
“The guy who was managing it flew it over to my airport and it looked great! Everybody had passed by the listing because of the photos. But the airplane was what I was looking for. It had RAM sevens (335-horsepower engines), one of which was really low time, and the other was mid-time. Then I went and put a panel in. That took quite a bit of time and effort to get the airplane where I wanted it to be.”
Dougherty was impressed by the pedigree of this 414A, and this aircraft demonstrates the model’s true allure.
“I still use the plane for my tradeshows, which me and my business partner just did one over in Missouri. We loaded it up with TVs and a booth in the back, with other things in the nose. The 414 is really a workhorse and you can just load everything you want to and fly it wherever you want. You can really see the utility that they had when there were fleets of these aircraft flying around. It is a great aircraft.”
When examining the speed and range vs. the cost of ownership equation, this twin Cessna ranks favorably. Dougherty budgets about $25,000 per year in maintenance costs and $250 per hour in fuel expenditures. He notes that insurance is high, but not as much as it would be in a single engine turboprop.
“For me, the cost of ownership and the performance envelope, the 414A is just a tremendous airplane. This 414A has a useful load of 2,038 pounds and [a fuel capacity of] 206 gallons, which is about five hours or 1,000 miles. Full fuel payload is 802 pounds,” Dougherty explained.
“For a typical flight, I usually fly with 140 gallons of fuel, so I can load the plane up with about 1,200 pounds. Down low, I don’t run high power settings because the airspeed does not go up proportionally to the fuel used. Under 10,000 feet, I usually see about 185 knots on 34 gallons per hour. Over 15,000 feet, I can get up to 220 knots on 42 gallons per hour. I love that there is no fuel penalty flying low. In winter I fly east up high and west down low to avoid headwinds.”
Owners of twin Cessnas are often focused on the upkeep of their aircraft, and the models are sometimes negatively associated with onerous maintenance expenses.
“Knock on wood, but I have not had any bad experiences with the maintenance of this aircraft. It even still has the safety cards for the back of the seats when purchased and the tie-downs on the back shelf when I bought it. I think it lived a pretty charmed life,” he said.
“My [maintenance] costs have been lower than most people, but I am very proactive with resolving issues. If there is a problem, I get it fixed immediately. There are some inspections and things that the FAA wants done that people always kind of grumble about. But I figured that these are things that should probably be done, like an exhaust inspection or replacing a heater at a certain interval. If you do those things [proactively], then you probably won’t have to worry. Trouble often appears in aviation when people try to scrimp on money.”
In addition to maintenance aspects, Dougherty has an ongoing focus on his own proficiency. He currently has roughly 670 hours behind the yoke, more than 250 of which have been in the 414.
“I try to fly the airplane once a week, for at least an hour, to keep myself current. I also do it because the airplane has systems that need to cycle once a week, and I think that’s part of the reason why I don’t have maintenance problems. A lot of times, people put these planes in a hangar and leave them until they want to go on a trip after two months [of inactivity]. It’s not healthy,” Dougherty noted.
“The second thing I do to help with proficiency is I go to sim training every year in Burnet, Texas at Aircraft Simulator Training. That is an insurance requirement, but I would still be doing it even if it wasn’t. The team down there has a lot of knowledge about these aircraft. I also do instrument proficiency [training] about twice a year.”
As Dougherty flies the aircraft more and speaks with other owners, he becomes more enamored with this model. He feels that Cessna really hit it out of the park with its design.
“These airplanes have a huge rudder, and the engines are pretty close to centerline, which makes it feel like you’re a great pilot when flying with only one engine. Also, one of the engines is canted several degrees to help with single-engine operations. Cessna did tremendous engineering with the plane with little details that everyone’s forgotten about,” he said.
“I did the research once on Cessna in the late 70s, and you could not build the plane now the same way. You can really tell that they had a lot of engineers to put to problems, and it shows how solidly built the airplane is. For example, it has two hydraulic pumps for the landing gear. If one fails, the other one can cycle the gear, and it only loses three or four seconds. It’s just made so well, and everything is robustly built.”
