KATE SARSFIELD / LONDON
Manufacturer receives more than 60 orders for four-seat DA40TDI, and targets Russia as key market
Diamond Aircraft expects to clinch European Joint Aviation Authorities certification at the end of the week for its DA40TDI light single-engined aircraft, which will mark the first-ever approval of a diesel-fuelled engine on a new certificated aircraft.
The DA40TDI, based on the Lycoming IO-360-powered DA40-180 Diamond Star, is equipped with a Thielert Aircraft Engines (TAE) 100kW (135hp) Centurion 1.7 jet-fuel engine, which earlier this month became the first diesel engine to be approved for retrofit to a light aircraft, following supplemental type certification on the Cessna 172 (Flight International, 19-25 November).
The four-seat DA40TDI will be manufactured at Diamond's Wiener Neustadt, Vienna, factory in Austria, with some of the DA40 airframes supplied by Diamond's Canadian facility in London, Ontario, where the Lycoming-powered Diamond Star is manufactured.
Diamond's marketing manager Sylvia Mandl says: "As demand for the DA40TDI is coming from markets outside North America [where Avgas is costly and/or in short supply], it is sensible to build the aircraft in Austria. So far, we have received more than 60 orders, [including 35 from the Lufthansa flying school], with a great deal of interest coming from Russia, which we expect to be a huge market."
Planned production of the €191,400 ($192,000) DA40 is set at 138 aircraft this year, increasing to 250 next year, which, broken down, consists of 170 Lycoming-powered and 80 TDI types.
Meanwhile, the first flight of the €360,000 diesel-fuelled DA42 Twin Star, a twin-engined derivative of the DA40TDI, is scheduled for late December or early January. Certification of the four-seat light aircraft is planned for a year later, says Diamond, and serial production will be based in Austria.
Source: Flight International
