Pilots I’ve talked to with experience of turbine twins have pretty much nothing good to say about the Piper Cheyenne series. Hard to fly, bad performance, bad quality and just not very exciting. With one exception. Piper, for some reason, let a complete mad banshee out of its hangar doors with the Cheyenne 400LS. Only built about 45 of them and it’s a completely different airplane than its namesake brothers. New wing, new tail, new engines, new cabin. This thing is like a jet in sheep’s clothing, or how about:
6000ft/min climb lightly loaded, 360kts top speed (it will almost keep up with the Avanti), 2000nm range, FL410 ceiling. I mean, this thing is a beast!
Here’s a great clip of Chuck Yeager when he sets a time to climb speed record in the 400LS in the late 80’s. Look at the VSI pegged out most of the way up to FL410:
And here’s AOPA’s article on the thing:
Obviously, with so relatively few made and their almost notorious performance amongst people in the know, they have kept their values pretty high. Seem to be in the $1 million range, which is considerably higher than other Cheyennes. I personally don’t care for the design much, although it looks pretty badass with the 5-blade MT prop retrofit. But I sure hope I can get a ride in one one day! Just thought someone else would enjoy these clips as much as I did.
It is a really interesting aircraft!
