Is there any situation in which a jet engine won't work, but a piston engine will?

Question

Is there any situation in which a jet engine won't work, but a piston engine will?

Answer 1

Since a jet uses a similar fuel to diesel to burn, a jet engine is a poor choice to use to fly into and out of Antartica. I believe prop planes are the only ones that generally make the flights. So in that situation, when extremely cold temperatures are involved, a piston engine is more likely to be able to start and run after sitting overnight , even at -50 F, than a jet engine, due to the inability of the diesel type fuel to ignite at those low temperatures. I think the turbine helicopters have to be pre-heated to start, if at all. Even the piston engines require some heat to keep from freezing up themselves.

- The Gremlin Guy -

Answer 2

Given this as a very specific example, but somewhere with a lot of sand would do gradual damage to a jet turbine's fans.  A piston engine's intake could be effectively filtered to keep similar dust and sand out.

Answer 3

A piston engine will pass through volcanic soot, while a jet engine will misfire.

It happened in 1975?...(I read this article in Reader's Digest some years back) that all of the four engines of a BA flight to Australia over Bali failed at 35,000 feets (because a volcano had errupted a day earlier and the soot floated at that height...it was a night flight so outside was completely dark). The Captain noticed that when he reached at 12,000 feets--during the powerless glide--(while the auto-igniters were working furiously to restart the engines) the engines came back to life. He climbed again to that height and the whole phenomenon repeated again after engines flamed out once again. (they eventually landed safely and on opening the engines by the technicians they found black deposits all over the blades).

In similar conditions piston engines will perform better as the speed is low as compared to turbine (as we know that props perform better at low speeds while turbines work better at high speeds). So the props will be able to cope the situation better while passing through the smoke and dusty soot (the props will also disperse the soot thus minimizing the effect).

Some other information can be found at the site below...

Answer 4

Yes.

Piston engines are more responsive to control inputs than jet engines are; that is, jet engines have "spool up" and "spool down" times, whereas piston engines can accelerate as fast as you can push the throttle.

This makes a piston engine much more useful for tasks like STOL flying, crop dusting, and air racing.

Answer 5

yes

Answer 6

anything you need to be low and slow for. piston is probably better

but do you mean a jet engine and piston engine or jets versus props

Answer 7

yes, but no one has survived to tell what happened!

Answer 8

Not really.

Jet engines are typically on larger aircraft, which may restrict which airports they can go to (due to weight and time it takes to take-off or stop after a landing). However there are large aircraft with piston engines

Answer 9

Yeah if the jet engine runs out of fuel, other than that , no.

Answer 10

Assuming each has the correct fuel, I can't think of any reason a jet won't work and a piston will. May be a dumb thing to do but it'll work.

Answer 11

In conditions where there is a lot of debris in the air (sandstorms, volcanic eruptions etc.) jets will often fail while a piston engine will continue to operate (early in WWII German & British fighters stationed in North Africa had enormous sand filters on the inlets)

However, cold is not a factor; P-3 Orion's often operate in below-freezing temps and the C-130 Hercules regularly operates in Antartica. While both of these aircraft have props, the props are driven by a jet engine.