Maneuvering speed is 127KIAS at gross weight.
Will you have the discipline to slow down 30Knots when turbulence is possible?
While the Meridian may be stronger than the original Malibu/Mirage an awful lot of them have come out of the sky in pieces....
(Including one last week viewtopic.php?f=41&t=228653)

Also Maneuvering speed gets lower at less than gross weight, I was unable to find that chart in a quick scan of online POH

My Aerostar is built like a tank
Vne- Never exceed 243 KCAS
Vno- Max. structural cruising 217 KCAS
Va- Max. design maneuvering 163 KCAS

Where are you getting your information? I have a Malibu and Va is 135 at max gross. I cruise at about 135 KIAS in the flight levels.

One of the biggest issues with the PA46 series is the amount of misinformation out there about them. The wing was throughly tested in the 90s and found to be exceedingly strong.

Did an online search from Meridian POH.
https://rwrpilottraining.com/uploads/3/ ... ss-340.pdf
Found this :

Also note that the one that failed last week had the tail come off, not the wing.
Also the airplane is plenty strong if flown within the limitations in the flight manual.

Given that if the manual says Vo is 127 KIAS and you cruise through turbulence at 155KIAS and the plane comes apart....
The NTSB will say: in-flight airframe failure due to loads and stresses that substantially exceeded design limits. Yes you exceeded design limits, nothing at all wrong with the design the pilot screwed up.

Given that I'm really wary of a plane that tempts me to screw up.


From the same POH quoted earlier at 20000 normal ISA goes 251Kn true.
127KCAS is 175Kn true. So your cruising at 251Kn 181 IAS airspeed.
Your only 7 knots below redline. If your descending into turbulence
you must both go down and slow down 50Knots at the same time.

Even if your quoted number of 135 is correct that does not help much.


Now to be fair I used an online calculator for the TAS calcs above and did not check them.
I got the speeds from page 5-58 of the POH link posted in the previous post.

Speaking of misinformation . . . when the PA46 fleet was grounded in 1991 and the FAA initiated a Special Certification Review, this had nothing to do with thoroughly testing the wing.

The focus was mainly on misuse of the KFC150 autopilot and pre-select. Several of the accidents also had not used pitot heat in freezing conditions. The take-away on the SCR was that training was severely lacking for new pilots on the PA46. Piper started their own training program, which eventually spun off into Attitudes International and eventually SimCom. Part of the five day initial PA46 course I took in 2000 was going through many of the accidents from the 80's and 90's. It's a capable airplane, but after owning and Mirage and a Meridian and seeing how many inflight breakups there were over the years, I never once felt that the wing was exceedingly strong.

Now POH Vno is 127 KIAS at gross weight
Assume empty weight of 3380
Pilot 200 lbs.
1/4 Fuel 285lbs

Weight is 3865
Max Gross is 5092
We should all know that Vno goes down as the weight decreases....

Using the formula in the post below...
The actual Vo at that weight is:110 KIAS (or 116KIAS if your speed of 135 is correct)

So if your light and crusing at max speed at 20000 ft you need to go down into turbulence you must reduce your indicated airspeed by more than 70 knots!

This is the perfect recipe for normalizing deviance.
You did not slow down and you hit some bumps and everything turned out ok.
So you do it again... until it isn't ok...

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/ques ... ith-weight

That’s simply not true. Have you looked at the SCR? They very much tested the wing.

Here’s a summary of the findings:

https://aeroresourcesinc.com/uploads/19 ... oblems.pdf

Some highlights: The wing started to flutter at 600 KIAS. The tail fluttered at 1000 KIAS. The tail was load tested to 9 Gs.

My 3rd class medical is scheduled for Thursday. The pre-buy is next week at Sun Aviation in Vero Beach. Sun Aviation wants a test flight prior to doing the annual/prebuy to check the systems that can't be checked out on the ground. He's having trouble finding anyone because everyone is booked like crazy. I'm doing the initial training also at Legacy in Vero Beach next month. They also don't have anyone available for the same reason. So it looks like I have all my other ducks in a row.

Any volunteers? (Willing to pay)

Have you tried John Mariani? He knows the PA46 down to the last bolt and is located in Vero.

Mariani@digital.net

Va is a speed at which you can do a single direction full deflection of the control surfaces. That means instantaneously pulling the yoke from level flight into your lap. Or taking the ailerons full deflection. It is not truly a turbulence penetration speed. The Meridian is a turbine, and Vmo is your normal operating envelope which accounts for expected turbulence and Vmo is 188 in that plane. Now, if you’re in moderate turbulence, you are going to want to slow down just because it hurts, but it’s not going to break the air frame all the way to Vmo. There has only been ONE Meridian to ever come apart in flight, They did not come apart in the normal operating envelope. It was a death spiral in convection, where the aircraft exceeded Vmo by 100 knots and overstressed the airframe. But the plane was going to hit the ground, Whether it hit the ground in one piece or more than one piece. The recent Malibu that came apart in flight, had its highest recorded ground speed while in the dive of 412 kn. That is not even counting the vertical component. These planes are very strong. But they are slippery and if you pull instead of push and then level the wings in a death spiral before arresting the descent you will break the plane. Just like the MMU TBM, the SLC CJ, or the 2 recent PC12 LOCs.

That’s simply not true. Have you looked at the SCR? They very much tested the wing.

Here’s a summary of the findings:

https://aeroresourcesinc.com/uploads/19 ... oblems.pdf

Some highlights: The wing started to flutter at 600 KIAS. The tail fluttered at 1000 KIAS. The tail was load tested to 9 Gs.

POH says in turbulence you must fly maneuvering speed.
Basically the speed at which the plane will stall before it breaks.

In the POH link I posted that is stated in section 4.47
In the same POH that speed is 127knots.

It does not say must. It says recommended to “reduce structural loads caused by gusts and inadvertent speed build ups …”, which is what we do in every plane; slow down.

There is a lot of (unintentional) misinformation here. Probably a limitation of the forum method. The SCR applied to the Malibu which was the Conti powered Malibu. The Lycoming powered Mirage followed that, and that plane received some increased aluminum in places to handle the 248 lb GW increase, including a much stronger wing spar that was built for the Meridian in 1999. The Meridian was not a simple bolt on conversion to a turbine, like the Jetprop, but has a different tail (33%) bigger, a stronger spar, and thicker wing skins which give the monocoque costruction more strength to handle the increased speed, and the 1035 lb increased gross weight over the Malibu.

Talking about tails and wings falling off in a Meridian thread is (unintentionally) misguided. There has only ever been one in-flight break up of a Meridian, and it occurred in convection, only after the pilot lost control, and pulled it apart AFTER a loss of control. The Meridian is plenty strong. Just like any aircraft, don't lose control in IMC, if you do, don't pull in a death spiral. That kills Citations, TBM's PC12's and pretty much any aircraft. Especially one as slick as a PA46. Take an upset recovery course.

Excellent post, however the 1991 SCR also applied to the Lycoming powered Mirages manufactured from May 1989 - March 1991, when the FAA issued the prohibition for any flying in IMC, then came the SCR. The new "Meridian" wing which was 43 pounds heavier than the original wing was added to the 1999 and on Mirage models, which was a major consideration when I bought a new Mirage in 2000. (1989 through 1998 Mirages have the original Malibu wing.)

As I mentioned before my only objection to an earlier post was the phrase used said that the 1991 SCR found that the wing was "exceedingly strong". That's probably why the thread took a different direction. It is just not true, especially in the earlier airframes. Kudos to Piper for re-designing the wing for the Meridian and extra kudos for then using that stronger wing in the '99 and on Mirages. However this accident on a newer airframe shows though that no matter what improvements have been made, if you go beyond the limits of the airframe, the outcome is not good on any airplane, but as you mention, especially on one as slick as a PA-46.