2024-07 · NASA ASRS report 2143716
PA-44 MEI flight instructor trainees reported multiple issues with rough running engines on the aircraft they used for two practical tests. After returning to base airport; students discovered they failed to have required maintenance inspection done before return.
Aircraft X was flown from ZZZ to ZZZ1 to do two MEI checkrides. When running up for the first checkride flight the mags failed the mag drop. After leaning and running the engine for a minute the mags then passed. Moving on to the idle check the left engine dropped to the mid 500s and ran really rough. Rechecked the mags and idled again and the engine went to 480RPM and was still running rough. Decided to abort the flight and to call Maintenance. Called maintenance and they said that if we go run at 1300rpm we will burn the fuel out of the servo regulator and it should be just fine to continue. So; we went and did that and it idled above 600RPM and was stable. Proceeded with the checkride and everything was normal. The second applicant [Student B] went to go fly a hot plane and the DPE pulled mixture on takeoff and put it back in and the engine did not start back up. They taxied off with one engine and did not try to restart it. They discontinued and the MEI and myself [Student A] thought the plane was fine to fly back to ZZZ. On the flight back in cruise the MEI and I [Student A] decided to switch seats because he did not need the multi time. We switched seats and nothing happened and landed safely in ZZZ. At work the following day we found out that we broke SOP by flying the plane without maintenance looking at it.
While flying 2 MEI candidates to a checkride; we made it safely to the checkride airport. My candidate; passed her ground. Upon running up; the left engine of the twin seemed rough. She returned to the ramp as she did not want to do a checkride with a rough runup engine. We called Maintenance back at headquarters. Maintenance told us it was probably due to there being a little extra fuel in the engine cylinder; and that it would run perfectly the next morning; but wouldn't do us any good now. We asked what to do now; to which our mechanic advised to do another run up and see how things went. My student and I got into the Seminole and did another run up. No issues were witnessed during the second run up. I then called my boss; who said to continue the checkrides. While we did the run up; Student B; did his ground. Student A then did her flight portion with no problems reported. Student B then decided to go fly. Prior to takeoff and prior to half of VMC; the DPE pulled the left engine's mixture. Student B responded appropriately and idled both engines; and stopped straight ahead. The left engine then quit. Student B returned to the ramp. Student B debated about continuing the checkride. He was nervous about the left engine failing. We concluded that it was vapor lock that caused the left engine to quit. He finally decided to discontinue the flight portion. We asked DPE his thoughts; DPE said it was safe to fly back.We decided to fly back to our originating airport. We conducted a thorough preflight. We performed a hot start; and both engines started up. We did a thorough run up to which both engines were acting normal. We returned back to our originating airport without issue.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.