Austria’s Answer to Beech’s T-6 & Embraer’s 314

Diamond Aircraft—the Austria-based, Chinese-owned maker of general aviation aircraft with manufacturing facilities in Wiener Neustadt, Austria and London, Ontario, Canada—announced its PT6A-25C-powered DART-750 aerobatic trainer had made its first flight at the company’s Austrian headquarters.

The test-flight, which spanned thirty-minutes and covered all basic flight-maneuvers and performance and handling checks—was piloted by Diamond’s head of flight test Sören Pedersen and senior test pilot Niko Daroussis. The aircraft and all evaluated parameters met or exceeded the expectations of the machine’s designers.

Diamond Aircraft head of design Robert Kremnitzer stated: “This flight marks another major milestone in the DART-750 program and demonstrates the entire team’s hard and excellent work in getting it achieved. The positive results make us confident in moving forward with the program as intended.”

Diamond’s DART-750 will emerge from its flight-test regimen and regulatory-travails a civil-certified all-composite aerobatic turboprop trainer in a tandem (longitudinal) seat configuration.

Powered by Pratt & Whitney Canada’s 750 SHP PT6A-25C turboprop engine, and featuring Garmin’s G3000 avionics suite, the Diamond Aircraft Reconnaissance Trainer (DART-750) is the centerpiece of Diamond’s DART Basic Training Solution—a modular training scheme comprising the aircraft itself, a proprietary DART FNPT II flight-simulator, and DART Computer Based Training (CBT) experience. By virtue of its DART Basic Training Solution, Diamond Aircraft sets out to comprehensively facilitate all didactic and practical phases of basic flight-training.

Over the last ten-years alone, Pratt & Whitney’s storied PT6A turboprop engine has seen upwards of 120 enhancements. Within the contexts of dependability and performance, the powerplant, in all its iterations, is well-and-truly unmatched—even under the most demanding and inhospitable conditions.

For more than six-decades, the PT6A engine has defined general aviation, powering enduring marques the likes of Beechcraft’s King Air family, de Haviland’s DHC-6 Twin Otter, Air Tractor’s AT-400, Schweizer’s Ag Cat G-164B, Embraer’s EMB 312 Tucano, Pilatus’s PC-6B and PC-12, Cessna’s 208 Caravan and 408 SkyCourier, and Daher’s TBM-700. In all, the PT6A global engine fleet of more than 52,000 units has flown in excess of 440-million hours.

Diamond Aircraft’s DART-750 will be presented to the broader public at 2023’s Paris Air-show (static display #A6). Basic EASA certification of the model is expected in 2024.

FMI: www.diamondaircraft.com