Page 18 - March 25

FEATURE
Power Rollback in a King Air?
by Joe Casey
airplanes on the planet. In a typical year, I’ll fly every variant of the Piper PA46, the Socata TBM and the
I think I’ve got the best career ever. I wake up every morning, go to the airport and fly some of the coolest
Beechcraft King Air. Whether it’s initial or recurrent training, flying one of our managed King Airs or ferrying
an airplane to the far reaches of our spinning globe, I get to fly nearly every day. It’s a privilege that I don’t
take lightly. I love my job!
The bottom line is I get to fly single-engine and multi-
engine turbines nearly every week, and there is one
major difference between flying the two: the MOR. MOR
stands for “manual override,” and it is a critical aspect
of flying a single-engine turbine. But a multi-engine
turbine does not have a MOR. Why?
To answer that question, we need to understand why a
single-engine turbine has a MOR. A MOR (usually either
a switch or a lever) allows the pilot to control the engine
in the event of a power rollback. A power rollback is the
nemesis of single-engine turbine operation and one of
the least understood aspects of flying a multi-engine
PT6-powered turbine. During a power rollback, the
engine rolls back to idle, and the pilot cannot control the
engine with the power lever. A rollback to idle is deadly
because the propeller could windmill. A windmilling
propeller causes an immense amount of drag that must
be understood to handle properly.
In King Air emergency procedure training, the focus
has traditionally been on a single engine failure. A failure
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­ KING AIR MAGAZINE MARCH 2025