Got to fly left seat in a TBM 700 to Montrose, CO today and enjoyed it, but it's hard to think about paying 4 times my hourly cost to go 80% faster in the same comfort. (Although it was nice to fly on top of the WX at FL 27.)

Anyone else fly one of these?

I've flown the TBM700B, C2, and 850 and love them all. Perfect owner flown single turboprop and with the price of the early 90's units coming down they are becoming more enticing. The fastest IAS I have ever flown is in one of these, 260 KIAS coming down from 20K at 6k fpm!

I fly the 850 for a living and it has been a good plane. I fly it about 30-40 hours a month and it's always ready to go when we are. Engine management and W&B can be tricky though. Bonanzas and Barons are great planes, but I shudder at the thought of trying to keep a flight schedule with anything but a turbine in our Colorado country. For a corporate setting, the TBM is worth every penny of it's relatively low operating cost IMHO.

David, would you elaborate on the difficulties please? I have zero turbine-time but have been led to believe that turbines, though tricky to start, are easier to manage than pistons. And the W&B? Easy to have the CG too far forward, rearward, or both?

Thanks,

Ashley

David has got it right. When you get to turbo'ed complex pistons, they just aren't suited for the rigor of the everyday grind. If my P-Baron were in the demanding business role I think it would drive everyone, especially the pilot and guy in the back seat, crazy. It just needs the TLC of the owner flown environment that is not on a serious grind of a schedule. For that, you need the turbines.

Before y'all freak out, I know there are exceptions, ymmv, wthdik, etc. Bottom line though in my experience, when you grind out hours day in day out, turboprops are definitely the way to go. Couldn't imagine a piston in that role. On the other side of the coin, it would be hard to imagine the expense of a turboprop in the role of $100 burger runs, occasional recreational use, etc. If you've got a KA, PC-12, TBM, Conquest, well you better get that airplane on the job.

Our Bo's and Barons are pretty amazing machines in their ability to do what they do at the efficiency they have. But I would pull my hair out if I had to fly it 4 times a week or something.

I shudder to think what 'relatively low' means in turbine-land .

I understand that you may not want to plaster your numbers all over the interwebs, but I would appreciate if you sent me a pm with your hourly direct operating cost. There seems to be a big 'fun with numbers' game going on whenever turboprop cost are being discussed, nothing beats real-world numbers in that regard.

Tyler,

I fly on average 600 hours per year in my NA A36. Its pretty reliable transportation and dispatch reliability is excellent. I have done this for numerous years. I also put about 600 hours on my TN A36 one year. I admit the dispatch reliability was a little lower than the NA bird but still excellent.

Hands down the Turbine is much more reliable but its been my experience they are best owned and maintained by someone else with a much larger checking account.

I seriously weighed becoming a partner in a TBM 850 vs. owning a piston twin outright. I accumulated about 35 hours in the TBM and got to know alot of TBM owners well. Ultimately the partnership was not to be for scheduling reasons. However, there were a few little things that were always troubling me as a potential owner:

1) No trailing link landing gear - my landings have always been smoother in my Barons than in the TBM

2) No solution to the battery drain issue - It seems to be impossible to leave the battery connected and the aircraft not in use for more than 10 days at a time. Wouldn't be such a big deal if the battery disconnect wasn't so fussy.

3) Love hate relationship between the owners and Socata and to a lesser extent P&W - with a relatively small fleet, TBM owners are incredibly dependant upon the manufacturer for support, which isn't always forthcoming, much more so than us Beechcraft piston owners.

4) No true FADEC - for a 3.2 AMU machine, it's awful easy to over-torque or over-temp (I believe the Pilatuses do have FADEC)

5) FOD susceptibility - I have very little turbine experience but this seemed like a huge ongoing risk that many TBM owners had experienced

6) Torque roll - we have our engine-out concerns on take-off and go rounds, TBM's have had a huge issue with torque roll accidents and fatalities. Again, it's hard to understand why someone hasn't written a FADEC program to prevent this under most circumstances.

In the hands of a professional pilot, I suspect most of the above concerns are either irrelevant or mere nuisances. For a potential owner/pilot, they are real considerations.

I fly the PC12 for a living, we use $426 plus fuel for our operating cost.

yes, i believe that. It supports my point in that you are the owner and pilot. Pay a guy to fly your airplane and turn him loose. One day he flies you, then he goes and picks up your in-laws a thousand miles away and flies them to see you and the wife in the Bahamas. 2 days later he flies you all home. Then you send him out the next day to pick up some employees at the rig site. you get the picture...when the owner flies things are different. when it's a hired gun, often the thing that happens is something not quite right is discovered during the run-up, or maybe a heat shield tab is broken on the stack, or an EGT probe is going haywire. You're not there to take care of it or make the decisions, and it goes into maintenance at god-knows-where. The management and logistics will drive you mad. Not that turbines solve all problems....but certainly they are better.

There have been a number of times when I as the owner/operator have made the trip a success whereas if it were a hired pilot he probably would have thrown up his hands and said "I'll fly it after it gets fixed"

Thanks.

I have seen those side-by-side comparisons on the TBM vs the PC12 and the KA90 with the -35 engines and for some reason the PC12 required considerably more on the overhaul reserve than either the TBM or one of the KA engines. I understand that it puts out a lot more power than the flat-rated TBM engine, are you aware of anything else that may play into this ?

How does the TBM compare with a Meridian in operating cost?

I posted before:

I met a guy with a TBM 700, probably a C model, about a year ago. He told me his TBM 700 well met his needs. He added he wasn't thrilled at the price difference to upgrade to an 850. After talking, I followed him on Flightaware for the remainder of that day.

His home base was outside Raliegh, N.C.

Home base to Palm Beach
Palm Beach to Key Largo
Key Largo to Savanah
Savanah to Palm Beach
Palm Beach return to home base.

His total flight time was slightly under 6 hours, wheels up to wheels down within a 12 hour time period. His day started at six in the morning and he was back home by six at night. That's a pretty impressive day of flying as a single pilot.

Thanks.

I have seen those side-by-side comparisons on the TBM vs the PC12 and the KA90 with the -35 engines and for some reason the PC12 required considerably more on the overhaul reserve than either the TBM or one of the KA engines. I understand that it puts out a lot more power than the flat-rated TBM engine, are you aware of anything else that may play into this ?

Doesn't the 300 have -67s?