A Few Words About This Picture

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I don’t make a habit of including photos in this space unless there’s a compelling reason to do so. I prefer to imagine that my incisive prose will somehow deliver you to a place where a mere photo would be nothing but a rude intrusion on a near metaphysical bond between author and reader. But mostly, I just don’t have the pix.

Today, I am making an exception. This photo was taken from the video stream when I was flying Diamond’s new DA62 last week, which is currently in the midst of a national tour. That’s Diamond’s Brent Eddington in the right seat and you’ll note that I have a look you could describe as either confusion, consternation or fear of impending doom. Or all three. The reason for this is that I am pretty sure I am doing a serial devotional of the astronaut’s prayer: “Oh, Lord, I beseech thee, don’t let me ^%$# up this $1.3 million airplane.” Not that there’s much likelihood of this, but when airplanes have seven-figure price tags, you quite naturally get nervous about such things.

I’m not going to do a review of the airplane in this blog, but I will be putting up the video as soon as I have time to cut the footage. Suffice to say in building the DA62, Diamond demurred on any meaningful compromise and the airplane shows it. From the door handles to the leather seats to the cup holders, the DA62 strikes me as a well-conceived design equally well-executed. If airplanes get better than this, I’m not sure I know how. It has the feel of a luxury car.

I will comment on the engines, which are Austro AE 330 diesels, the latest iteration of the company’s conversion of the well-regarded Mercedes OM640. (See a video about ithere.) Mercedes has dumped a few mega million Euros into the R&D of these engines and that shows, too. Occasionally in this space, you’ll read comments decrying the lack of sophisticated ECU technology in aircraft engines. Well, stop complaining. The AE 330s are those very engines you’re carping about not existing. On startup, they are so utterly silk smooth that they transfer no discernible vibrations to the airframe and the only way to be sure they’re running is to look at the props spinning.

During the video shoot, I had occasion to record the startup from outside the airplane from five feet in front of the props. The engines are so quiet you could have a normal conversation without raising your voice. Oh, and they’re throttle by wire, too. Throttle operation is smooth as buttah. One thing the engines lack is long TBOs. The AE 330s are, for now, 1000-hour engines. This has been a persistent weakness in the diesel engine segment and it needs to be addressed. On the plus side, the Austros are overhaulable at reasonable prices, rather than having to be replaced as are the Continental diesels.

I first clapped eyes on and flew this airplane three years ago in Austria, when it was a test article then known as the DA52. At the time, Diamond CEO Christian Dries was fuming that this would be the last certification project he would do. He obviously wasn’t serious because he’s since embarked on an even more ambitious project to build and certify electric aircraft. I think Dries couldn’t stop pursuing new airplane projects if he wanted to. As are many of us, he’s afflicted.

I can’t recall what Dries was annoyed at, but it might have been this: The DA62 is being offered in two versions. One has a 1999-kg (4397-pound) weight limit for Europe, the other has a 5071-pound (2305-kg) limit for other than Europe. I’ll do the math for you. The European version has a 674 pound lower useful load, turning what is otherwise a full-fuel-with-five-people airplane into one that carries two with generous baggage or three with a little less fuel and no baggage. The stated reason? Air traffic fees in Europe rise markedly at weights higher than 2000 kg. That’s why no one should wonder why we in the U.S. so rabidly oppose privatized ATC funded by user fees.

When I visited Austria in that summer of 2013, the CS 23 rewrite was in full swing and I asked Dries if he thought applying the new streamlined regulations to the DA62 cert project would have reduced the price appreciably. He was skeptical. As I reported before, Dries believes that the only thing that will drive down prices significantly is volume. Lots of volume. The unfortunate truth is that there only 20 to 40 people in the world a year who can afford to buy an airplane as expensive as the DA62. This is a constant reality that’s not likely to change much even if volume tripled.

I restrain myself from constant wailing about the high price of airplanes. The din is at once annoying and boring. The prices are what they are for reasons not worth debating for the thousandth time and we all understand them anyway. In the CS 23 project, the industry is making a concerted and legitimate effort to control aircraft price inflation and we can only wait to see how effective that will be. We saw last week at Sun ‘n Fun that it’s already having an effect in retrofit avionics. In the meantime, I ignore the prices and revel in what an airplane like the DA62 represents: a thing designed and executed about as well as it can be, unblemished by compromise. That’s worth a cheer no matter what it costs.

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