First In North America Equipped With RVSM

On Wednesday, EADS invited -- in the words of CEO Stephane Mayer -- "media, customers, our partners for US distribution, supporters, partners, and aviation authorities," including a couple dozen of its favorite journalists, to celebrate a milestone and hear the latest from the GA branch of the aviation conglomerate based in Tarbes, France.

Mayer is a large man, younger than you might expect for a guy in such a responsible position, with a pleasant voice and an excellent command of English, despite having a mild French accent and occasional comprehensible but not-quite-textbook syntax ("thank you for your attendance to this meeting") He got right to business at the start of the presentation. "We would like to present to you a special TBM 700, as it were. Serial Number 300 is right behind you. Three hundred is a kind of 'Golden Number' for this aircraft. Three hundred knots is its maximum speed, and its original certification ceiling was Flight Level 300. And even the targeted range is five times 300 nautical miles. So the number 300 is appropriately symbolic of the success that this ambitious project has enjoyed, making it today the flagship of my company."

Mayer then took a walk through TBM 700 history. "It was 18 years ago that my predecessor, Pierre Gauthier, the former head of the Concorde program...decided to launch this ambitious project. At this time a partnership was formed with the American company Mooney to launch this program, TB was standing for Tarbes, which is our factory city in the southwest of France, and M for Mooney."

Mooney wound up withdrawing from the project, and Aerospatiale -- nowadays absorbed into EADS -- wound up going it alone. The airplane made its first flight on July 14, 1988, a date its French builders have no problem remembering.

The TBM 700 wound up hitting the sweet spot for customers who were seeking very specific things, the most important of which is speed. The TBM's costs are also a factor for purchasers. The TBM's single engine makes it extremely competitive with twins. "Psychological resistance to a single-engine turbine disappeared over time," Mayer says. He credits that to the demonstrated very high reliability of the Pratt and Whitney PT-6 turbine engine. "We are so confident in our aircraft that all of the 200 TBMs delivered to this continent came here, flying the northern Atlantic route, in winter or summer. And ... I have just experienced this wonderful trip myself, ferrying two days ago a TBM700 from France to Oshkosh, with our chief test pilot Christian Briand. It was a wonderful trip, in this wonderful plane."

TBM 700 number 300 is not only special because of its serial number (300), matching N number (N300AZ), and special paint job with a prominent "300" on each side, but it also is the first plane delivered in the USA with Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (RVSM) certified avionics. Another option it has is the pilot door, which was introduced in 1999 (standard TBMs have only a cabin door, small or optional cargo-sized). Since then, about one-third of TBM700s have the pilot door option, and EADS expects this ratio to continue. One hundred of the TBM700s have been the more powerful and structurally stronger C model, certified only in 2003, which bespeaks rapidly increasing sales.

The future appears bright for the TBM 700. "Nearly twelve years after its maiden flight, the TBM 700 is still the fastest single turboprop airplane in the world, and can rival light twinjets on 500 mile hops," Mayer said. "[But] the TBM 700 can be used on shorter runways and costs a half or a third as much to run!" When he was asked about the competitive threat posed by the emerging class of Very Light Jets (VLJ) exemplified by Eclipse, Mayer's confidence was unshaken. "How will we compete with the new personal jets? We have already a lot of advantages when we compare to those personal entry [level] jets. First of all they are not here; they are still somewhere ahead of us. We are not as worried as people imagine, because we have a lot of advantages. We have better landing and take off performance, we have less limitation by altitude of temperature, we have a better payload/range combination today, we have a lower cost of maintenance because of one engine instead of two engines, we have lower operating costs, and we have easier qualification for the [type] rating for pilots -- we have five days instead of the two-week course recommended by the VLJ manufacturers. So we believe we have a better aircraft for individual owner/pilots, instead of those entry level jets that are being marketed as air taxis...."

The TBM 700 delivers a unique speed and economy, with a healthy dose of French chic. Jets or no jets, M. Mayer's confidence in the future of his company's cabin-class, real-fast turboprop is grounded in solid fact, and supported by the TBM's impressive sales figures.

FMI: www.socataaircraft.com