Was waiting for my pax today and one rolled up for fuel. Thinking they would make an excellent corporate plane. Prices less than a KA200, but I suppose the fuel would be real high. Just a thought.

Not supported by Embraer any longer.

I flew one for a couple of years as a corporate (team) plane. In the books it shows an 18 seat corporate configuration. (we had 31 with FA seat ) I always thought it would be great for corporate, once you took out a bunch of seats, the overhead bins and put a "gulfstream" interior in it.

295kts or so in summer, 305 in winter on about 1100 lbs/hr.

school is about a month, heavy on systems. (FSI didn't work weekends during training for some reason)

When we flew it we had waivers to fly it Pt 91. Now it is not so easy.

Flew one for approx 6 years at Continental Express (Britt certificate). OK plane once you got used to all the system failure modes....

Flaps were hydraulic, 6 segments, with an actuator for each segment and a computer to run it all in unison. Guess what didn't always run in unison? Could cause a lock out coming down or going up.

Gear doors, there were 12, 4 for each gear leg. They were more reliable than the flaps but the sequencer could still get messed up, usually they just stayed open after retraction if thing messed up as there were limit switches that would prevent the gear from retracting if all the doors didn't open.

PACs, were not big enough for the plane for ground cooling, and when the cabin was heat soaked it was difficult to get it to cool off on short/low altitude hops. We sweated a lot in the 'pit. Also you could smell the lav in the cockpit. Didn't matter if it was a front lav plane or a rear lav plane.

It had an APU, which was ok, until the airport authority got so many complaints about the noise that you were asked/told not to start it in the morning. This applied to the smaller airports we served that had housing near by. Larger airport didn't care.

It flew ok, heavy ailerons, not quite as heavy elevator, and a boosted rudder in case of an engine out. Big pitch changes with flap extension but you learned to run the trim as the flaps came out. Only plane I have flown that you could do 250kts to a 5 mile final and have to add just a touch of power to make the runway.

Carried ice pretty well but all of us operating out of Cleveland/Newark had an ice story to tell if you were there longer than one winter. Mine was landing just ahead of this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Ex ... light_6291. We had a few moments of intense aviation on the downwind due to ice, heard TWA check in and report heavy ice accumulation and we seconded the report. Heard 6291 check in with the tower as we cleared the runway and found out about the crash when we got to the hotel.

All in it was a plane designed in the early 80s, built through the 90s for commuter airline use. I can only think of 3 or 4 that went to corporate flight departments. That means that any out there are well used and probably abused. I flew it from 1990 to the end of 1996 and had the pleasure of going down to San Jose dos Campos to pick up our last 4 new planes and flying back as a 4 ship. Got 36 hrs on St. Maarten out of the deal.

It was an E ticket ride for its time but I believe that its time has pretty much passed. We were told at various times that operating costs were 20 to 30 dollars a minute but then we had 3.5 to 4 crew per plane and a MX staff to keep them running 18 hrs a day.

Wow...great insights guys! Up here a company called Great Lakes still flies a couple.

I guess they were on their way back from ISN and stopped in DIK for fuel. Didn't go to the terminal, but to the FBO where I was parked. They must not have had passengers on board, as that could have been viewed as some kind of TSA breach? Pilot type got out to get a soda (?) out of the baggage hold and had a heck of a time getting the rear door to close.

Big plane and big Pratt's. Interesting... I thought I snapped a pic, but my passengers pulled up right as I was trying to take pic and I must have goofed it up. :(

Most fun I ever had in an airplane!

I flew the same planes as Mr. Clark. Same recollections. We spent three days in ground school on the propeller.

Fun, but very hot in Houston...

1000 hours in the Vibroliner, at ASA. First airliner I ever flew.

We had a couple of nasty, fatal crashes in those things back in the nineties. Both were the fault of the props.....

Steve, did you do your training with Glen Johnst*** ? FSI ATL

I think ex-airliners are an excellent personal aircraft...we ran around in a SA226TC, great plane and you can take a bunch of your friends!

What's the range? Most airliners of that size don't have much range.

The SA-226TC or AT had two options... take all of your friends on a short range, or take your self a long range...

Fuel fuel usually results in zero payload... but it carries 4342# of fuel (at 500-600PPH).

The SA227AC or AT series had about 1000# more payload...

Jason

On basically 5700# (full) of fuel we had to limit passengers to 20-21. Going to the west coast from NC was a two stop, one stop returning east. Short trips we carried 31.

When we picked it up from Sky West/Continental Express in Portland after pre buy, Sky West crewed it to NC where we took ownership. We flew to Salt Lake for a shake down. Then they filed to Winston-Salem, NC for GPS and TAWS install.
Clearance delivery chuckled, are you sure this is your clearance ? Once up with center the crew asked for "Radar Vectors KINT" and (son of a...) they did it! every handoff gave us a heading. Non stop (with an 80KT push) Salt Lake to Winston. Landed with more than an hour remaining... I think it was 1400#.
Fun trip, co-pilot was just out of IOE, this was his first "trip". Captain had been in maintenance for several years before switching to cockpit crew, lots of great info for me and the mechanic.

Yes, empty they had great range. Bringing the new planes back from Brazil we left San Jose dos Campo (just NE of Sao Paulo) and flew to Belem and from there to St. Maarten.
After the overnight there on to FLL to have the rest of the interior installed and then up to Allentown, PA. We did as much of that as we could at FL310, the certified ceiling for the E120 or as high as we could go to get the best range. Props were pulled back to the feather gates so they could take as big of a bite out of the thin air as possible.

With 3 crew, 30 pax and bags they were good for around 2-2.5 hrs with reserves. Thankfully we were almost always able to find an airport with good minimums(had several airline exemptions we could use) near by in most cases. We were always running up against landing weight issues on the shorter flights and in some cases zero fuel weight issues. 2500# to 3500# were fairly standard fuel loads.

As Jeff H. stated, they were fast planes at 280TAS-300TAS so 2-2.5 hrs got you fairly far down the road. Kinda pulling this out from the dark corners of my mind but I think I remember the rule of thumb for flight planning was 1200# for the first hour, 1000# for the second hour and if you went into the third hour it was 800# b/c of the decent and slower speeds in the terminal area. You didn't have to put flaps out unless you slowed below 180kts so we always tried to get/keep a speed of 180 or greater until we absolutely had to slow down for whatever reason.

I flew one when I was at Comair. Great airplane; I enjoyed every minute of it. They seem to be popular with NASCAR race teams.

Used to be, no 120s left on the circuit. Some went to RJs and ERJs, a few still operate their own, but there are two 125 operators that carry most of the teams now. Champion Air , and Victory air both in Statesville,NC using ERJ 145s.