COMPAGNIE DAHER TBM700N

The TBM is a single-engine turboprop built for speed rather than volume: it cruises at 300 knots and more in the flight levels, which is jet territory, in a pressurised six-seat cabin, on a single PT6. It is the aeroplane an owner-pilot buys to do 1,200-mile business trips alone or with two or three others, quickly and at flight levels where the weather mostly is not. Unlike the PC-12 it has no cargo door and a much smaller cabin — it is a fast personal aeroplane, not a utility one. Every TBM ever built is certified as a TBM 700, so the registry name hides thirty years of development. The original 700A of 1990 has a 700 shp PT6A-64 and conventional instruments; the 700B added the wide entry door, the 700C1 a rear cargo compartment, and the 700C2 raised gross weight to 7,394 lb. The TBM 850 of 2006 has the PT6A-66D rated at 850 shp in flight, with the Garmin G1000 standard from 2008. The TBM 900 of 2014 added winglets and a five-blade propeller, the 930 of 2016 the Garmin G3000 touchscreen deck, the 940 of 2019 an autothrottle and automatic de-icing, and the 960 of 2022 a FADEC-controlled PT6E-66XT and autoland. A 1995 TBM 700 and a 2015 TBM 900 are a hundred knots and two generations of cockpit apart on paper that says the same thing.

It is the fastest single-engine turboprop in production and it is bought by owner-pilots who want jet-like speed without jet costs or a type rating. The constraint is payload: with full fuel the cabin load is around a thousand pounds, so the six seats and the full range cannot be used together, and owners plan around that. It is fast and slippery and demands genuine energy management on descent and approach; the type's accident record includes loss-of-control events involving pilots moving up from slower aircraft. Operating costs are turbine costs — hot sections, a six-figure overhaul, 55 to 60 gallons an hour — and insurance requires formal initial and annual recurrent simulator training.