Carenado Seneca V - wrong MTOW

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Hi folks. I just bought the Carenado Seneca V, and noticed its maximum weight is wrong. The real aircraft has a MTOW of 2.155 kg (4750 lb), but the FS version has only 1.999 kg (4.407 lb) as the maximum weight.

This leaves little to no room to fly six adults + baggage (yeah, I know… the Seneca has serious limitations and no one flies missions like that all the time - I’m using this figure to show the impact of the wrong MTOW in MSFS).

If I put six 75 kg (165,3 lb) people and no baggage (just to test, I repeat), the max fuel that I can carry with this bird in MSFS is 52 kg (or 114 lb, around 18.4 gal). This ensures less than 40 minutes of endurance (considering 29 gal per hour of fuel burn).

The operating empty weight looks odd too. I’ve read the real plane weighs around 1.456 kg (3212 lb) empty, but the Carenado version shows 1.497 kg (3.300 lb). Not a VERY HUGE difference, but It sure affects the overall situation. And yes, I know this can vary due to additional equipment and avionics from one aircraft to another IRL.

With the real aircraft’s MTOW and six 75 kg (165,3 lb) people, I would have 249 kg more to use as fuel load (considering 1.456 kg empty weght). This means 88 US gal, or 549 pounds of avgas, which gaves me more than three hours of total endurance.

I hope the Carenado team fixes this… the Seneca is my favorite plane =(

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Carenado modeled a specific Seneca V that was only certified for 1999kg gross weight. I believe this was done on some planes to reduce or eliminate landing fees and such but there was no physical difference between the standard 2155kg model. Obviously, this doesn’t really apply in the simulator world, and you can just load up the extra weight.

They also modeled one that had all the options (air conditioning, de-ice, radar, etc.) so, yeah, the useful load is very small.

An example POH with the 1999kg limitation can be found here:

Seneca V POH | The Flying Fabio

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Thank you very much for your information!

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Clever! Having a twin-prop but without the expensive landing fees over 2 tons :smiley:

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Modelling that particular one for a flight sim doesn’t really make much sense though. Must admit I was very disappointed when I tried to use it for Neofly and found that it had about enough spare capacity for a packed lunch and was therefore about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Explains why I now rarely use it, which is a real shame as it’s fun to fly.