Launching a new era for the 70-year-old lightplane manufacturer, Piper Aircraft president and CEO Jim Bass last month took the wraps off the design mockup for the single-engine, six-seat PiperJet, an airplane priced at $2.19 million that adds another serious player to the market for very light jets.
A walk-through mockup on display at Piper’s booth at the NBAA Convention in Orlando showed nearly all components of the proposed airframe except for the landing gear. The PiperJet looks like a cross between a Malibu Meridian and a DC-10. The airplane will feature the turboprop single’s sleek proportions, but its lone turbofan engine will be mounted in the tail, like the center engine on the McDonnell Douglas widebody trijet [a design that began life as a twin and, late in the game, gained a third engine that always looked like something of an afterthought compared with the L-1011’s third engine, buried in the tailcone at the end of an S duct.–Ed.].
