When Piper introduced the Meridian in 2001, it marked the return of the Vero Beach, Fla.-based manufacturer to the turboprop market and the end of a nine-year hiatus since the Cheyenne production line went quiet in 1992. Reflecting the shifts in the market since the Cheyenne died, Piper put its new eggs in a turboprop single, leaving the market for building turboprop twins (also abandoned by Cessna, Mitsubishi and Rockwell/Gulfstream) to Raytheon Aircraft with the venerable Beech King Air line and to Piaggio with the still futuristic Avanti.
Piper’s was a smart move for at least two reasons: the low end of the turbine market had changed drastically in those nine years with the arrival of the CitationJet and the emergence of development programs for very light jets that, we are told, will sell for around a million bucks; and by basing its turboprop single on the existing Malibu Mirage pressurized piston single, the development task was less daunting technically and financially for a company that had been steadily rising from the ashes of bankruptcy in 1991.
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