Daher Introduces TBM 930 Turboprop Single With G3000 Panel

How do you improve upon the fastest, best-selling single-engine pressurized turboprop on the planet? After a top-secret development program, Daher revealed the answer in a ceremony at its Tarbes, France, manufacturing facility. While we haven't flown the new airplane yet---though we're already on it!---we can pretty much weigh in on the change right now.

Daher actually gives a subtle hint to the nature of the upgrade in the new plane's designation: The change from 900 to 930 is all about the upgrade to the Garmin G3000 touch-controlled flight deck, which is standard equipment on some pretty fancy turbines already, including the Cessna Citation M2, the newly certificated HondaJet, the Embraer Phenom 100 and 300 jets, and at least one other airplane we know about, but can't talk about yet.

Courtesy of Daher

With the upgrade from the already capable advanced G1000 suite in the model 900, the TBM 930 is completing a transition it started a couple of years ago when the company began the process of updating it to glass cockpit standards from a steam gauge setup that persisted for longer than many anticipated.

The G3000 panel features multiple touch controllers, a simplified and elegant interface with shallow menus, and multiple paths to the functions pilots are looking for, as well as numerous safety updates (some of which are already integrated into the G1000 package in the model 900), including envelope protection and emergency descent management (EDM) for hypoxia protection, new aural safety alerts, angle of attack, and Bluetooth app connectivity through Garmin's Flight Stream 210 interface.

Daher plans to continue to offer the TBM 900 alongside the 930.

Visit tbm.aero.

Isabel GoyerWriter

A commercial pilot, editor-in-Chief Isabel Goyer has been flying for more than 40 years, with hundreds of different aircraft in her logbook and thousands of hours. An award-winning aviation writer, photographer and editor, Ms. Goyer led teams at Sport Pilot, Air Progress and Flying before coming to Plane & Pilot in 2015.