Why would they do it the same way? How would they benefit from that? As you say, then the results would be comparable…

How is their billion hour number normalized? How many engines are represented by that? If a billion engines each flew flawlessly for one hour, does that count? A billion hours is about 114,000 years. Their number is marketing hype. It's meaningless by itself.

In order to get the PC12 cleared in Canada for commercial passenger operations, Pratt and Pilatus had to give detailed information to the Canadian government for all cause loss of propulsion. Whatever data they presented, it was good enough to get the single engine exempted for all condition, night, IMC, mountains. This is what they put on their website. The cross country SETP’s Piper, TBM, PC12 have a lower rate of ENGINE related fatal accidents than the comparable METP’s. Whatever the rate is, engine failure is way way down on the list of things to worry about flying these SETP’s.

Assuming that they left off a comma on the engine hours, that works out to about 7,000 hours per engine. That doesn't seem very long to me, maybe it's just me.

Sounds like a lot of hours to me. With an overhaul interval of 3500-3600 hours that means every engine on “average” is approaching the second overhaul. What do you think the average hours are on a continental or lycoming? 3600 hours for a pilot that flies 150 hours a year is 24 years to overhaul. Those are big numbers. Of course some of these engines in commercial operations are hitting 20,000-30,000 hours and multiple overhauls before they are swapped out.

They are very reliable engines. We run 8 of them for our business (4 C90A’s). We have had one complete failure of an engine in 39 years. The plane returned to the airport of departure without incident. It was not an accessory.
I operate an MU-2 in support of the same company. So far, so good with the two Honeywells over the last 8 years as well…here’s to hoping they all continue happily producing power!
Congrats to Pratt & Whitney.

Would someone please post another manufacturer with better claims?

I wouldn't expect a piston aircraft engine to accumulate a tenth of what a turbine does before it's scrapped. It's entirely apples to oranges. Likewise commercial vs private turbines. 7000 hours on an engine with a useful life of 20,000 to 30,000 hours is low, and those 7000 hours represent the youth of the engine. I would expect fewer issues with those engines.

I'm not saying that PT6 are not reliable, I just think Pratt's number of a billion hours is not particularly useful since it doesn't explain how they arrived at that measure.

For the masses, it's a marketing number, e.g., the difference between "chargeable" and "non-chargeable" events. Only "chargeable events make it to the sales brochure. For the regulators, it may or may not count, depending on circumstances.

Examples:

turbine blade fails causing uncommanded engine shutdown - "chargeable" event

Pilot sees low oil pressure and preemptively shuts down engine - "non-chargeable" event

Well if we are going to use anecdotal "evidence" then pistons are better. My old flight school was in business for over 30 years and operated many different piston engine aircraft mostly running four cylinder Lycomings and a few Continental 0200s. There was not one total engine failure event in that period of time. There were two incidences. One being an exhaust valve failure on a Seminole that did not even require an engine shutdown--it flew back to TYS and landed without incident, and the other happened to me when the maintenance shop decided to repair an induction hose with duct tape on the schools Warrior. The tape came loose and was sucked into the carburetor causing a mild power loss on takeoff that I did not notice until it was clear I was not climbing normally. I circled around and landed without incident. That all said, my father's T210 had a catastrophic crankshaft failure at 300hrs and put him in a field but thankfully he was not hurt.

Maybe I am over or under reading this, but Pratt follows their engine hours. An engine running an hour is one hour for pratt. 2 engines running 1 hour each is 2 hours for pratt. 1 engine running 1000 hrs is 1000 hrs for Pratt. 1000 engines running 1 hour is also 1000 hours for pratt. So all pratt is reporting is the total number of hours that all their engines combined have run. Not sure how else to see that? A billion hours is a butt load of hours, any way you slice it.

Not if it’s a million engines each running for 1000 hours. That’s a million low time engines. I would expect them to have an excellent record. Their number is meaningless.

Wasn’t the pt6 originally a hydro water pump?

Always had good luck with the PT6s

Flown plenty of single engine ones over very forced landing unfriendly places, I wasn’t exactly sweating it

Here's what caused my last (and hopefully last) in-flight engine failure. It was a PT6-28, and IIRC this shaft coupled between the fuel controller and pump...before the splines stripped.

That PT-6 shut down cold. No hope of restart. Clearly an in-flight failure, but never made it to Pratt's stats, because it wasn't the core engine.

Really? You're smarter than your posts on this thread are showing. Prove me wrong.......