Tecnam P2010 TDI Earns FAA Certification

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Tecnam’s single-engine P2010 TDI has received its FAA type certificate, the company announced on Wednesday. The four-seat TDI, a Jet A-1/diesel version of the avgas-burning P2010, is powered by the 170-HP, dual FADEC-controlled Continental CD-170 engine. It comes equipped with Garmin G1000 NXi avionics and GFC-700 autopilot with electronic stability and protection (ESP).

“The FAA certification of the P2010 TDI marks a significant milestone for the Tecnam US Market, the availability of Jet A1 in every airport makes our four-seater the ideal machine for cross-country mission and efficient flight training,” said Giovanni Pascale, Tecnam managing director.

The Tecnam P2010 TDI features a composite fuselage and all-metal wings and stabilator. Priced at around $412,000, the aircraft offers a top cruise speed of 140 knots, 961-NM range and useful load of 805 pounds. As previously reported by AVweb, the P2010 TDI earned its European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) type certificate in October 2020.

Kate O'Connor
Kate O’Connor works as AVweb's Editor-in-Chief. She is a private pilot, certificated aircraft dispatcher, and graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. “… the availability of Jet A1 in every airport makes our four-seater the ideal machine for cross-country mission…” Overzealous marketing?

    I flew a 172 to Oceano (L52) for a beach vacation last week. While there is 100LL there (SS), there is not Jet A1 there. (Even though Jet Helicopters use it sometimes, the runway is too short for jet traffic.)

    As I scan my brain, it seems that I’ve flown in to a lot of small airports where Jet A wasn’t available.

    And at KCMR, although Jet A is available, it is only available by appointment. (Apparently in a truck.)

    Not so “ideal” if you need fuel at these airports on your XC.

  2. The Italians tend to be a bit flamboyant in their descriptions of new ideas. The phrase may apply more to Europe where avgas is harder to find and much more expensive. Unfortunately, diesel burning engines are no more popular with the green crowd than avgas, especially in Europe where there is great pressure to go electric and ditch all petroleum burning machines.

  3. Hey guys, last I checked, there’s no, err, zero, lead in Jet-a or diesel.

    Until batteries become as energy dense as petrol, this makes more sense than LL, which, by the way has a LOT more lead than mogas ever did.

  4. Even if batteries become as energy dense as liquid fuel, there are still going to be a lot of problems using them practically in practice. One major problem is “Where are you going to put all those batteries?”

    (And, as I pointed out in an earlier Comment to a story about electric aircraft: unlike liquid fuel, an electric airplane does not get lighter as its fuel is consumed. Meaning there’s no more step-climbing as fuel burns off, take-off and landing weight will have to be the same, etc.)

    One of the fortuitous things about liquid fuel is that you can store it (easily) in the wings. Which leaves the fuselage available for paying passengers, cargo, etc.

    And then there’s a subtle problem of in-flight structural loads. A long time ago I read a report/quiz/something about how the weight of the fuel in a wing was necessary for air transports to keep the wing structure intact during certain aerodynamic loads. It seemed counter-intuitive that a heavier wing was actually a good thing, but, IIRC, that was the gist. (Not the same as maneuvering speed. This had something to do with stress/strain in the wing structure itself.)

    And even if you can put batteries in the wing, what about all that heavy wire? I’m helping someone do a camper van conversion, where his batteries deliver 300 Amps at times. For his short 5 foot run from batteries to Inverter, he has to use 4/0 AWG wire. (Heavy.) Wire will have to become larger (and heavier) the further away the batteries are.

    So there’s no practical way that you can carry low voltage, high current electricity over an appreciable distance, like the length of an air-transport wing.

    Which means that there will have to be be mini-inverters in the wing too, to boost battery voltage up (and from DC to AC?) to where current is down to 20 Amps or so.

    Which is just one more failure mode.

    • And, as I slept on it more, what about cabin pressurization and wing de-ice?

      As for Pressurization, no more bleed air from a turbine (unless an electric powered turbine/turbo-fan). So back to the old ways and old days of pressurizing (and air conditioning?) cabins.

      (Ask anyone who has built a camper van conversion. Battery powered AC depletes batteries amazingly rapidly.)

      More crucially, what about wing de-ice? No more hot bleed air from a gas turbine. Or, if electric de-ice (787), heating anything with battery power is also very depleting. That’s a LOT more batteries to carry than just a back of the envelope calculation to take off, cruise, approach, alternate, land, reserves, under battery power.

      I don’t see All Electric Trans-Oceanic, unless it’s nuclear.

      And even if one could practically use battery power for de-ice, what batteries are capable of operating at -50 C?

      While one can use battery electricity to heat the batteries to keep them warm (with the caveat above about heating from battery), there would have to be two pads per battery, powered by independent banks, as a fail-safe.

      It seems that, initially, the FAA might have to limit battery-only Air Transports to short flights, where OAT’s were less than freezing. And perhaps No Ice. (Maybe even no flying above 14,000′ for O2 for paxes.)

      And then there’s “re-fueling.” How many times have I heard a King-Air call for a “Quick Turn Around”?

      How long is it going to take to charge up an air transport for the next flight? (How many Telsa’s equivalents in an Air Transport?) I don’t think it can be done in 30 minutes. And that assumes that an airport with, say, 25 Gates, could supply all the needed 1.21 Gigawatts at the same time. (Makes San Diego’s “Brown” Field take on new significance.)

      I’m beginning to think that, if necessity demanded it, a Hybrid Air Transport would be the only feasible solution, where liquid fueled engines are tuned to burn Jet-A at a high efficiency, which, in turn, drive highly efficient electric motors, which also keep a smaller-sized battery bank up to full for the other systems and for backup, in case of double engine failure. (Somewhat like the paradigm used in Diesel trains.)

      But that means both the weight of batteries and liquid fuel, plus the weight of a couple Diesel engines.

      As an aside, if there were an advantage to All Electric aircraft, I presume that the Military would already have All Electric Jet Fighters.

      I wonder how many batteries it would take to power After-Burners?

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