I don't think we should confuse the cause of the fatal accident with the cause of the engine failure.  It appears from the accounts that he had ongoing problems with his engine.  Some people would argue he shouldn't have been taking long cross country trips with those problems.  The cause of his fatal accident wasn't the engine, it was his less than conservative choices he made after his engine started to fail.

 

Compare his actions to the Legacy that lost an engine a couple weeks ago.  He did an awesome job of getting his plane down and walked away.

 

To comment on Dan O'Brien's comment, we builders are much more reluctant to tear our birds to pieces and walk away.  If you lose your Mooney 201 or your 172, you open up Trade a Plane and look for another one.  We have invested so much of ourselves in our planes, we don't put ourselves first, and not worry about what happens to the plane.

 

Many of us underinsure our planes, which I believe leads to less than conservative actions when we need to get on the ground.

 

Mike Easley