Best Family Planes

While we’re talking high-end singles here, we’d be remiss to not mention the TBM series of pressurized, single-engine turboprop planes. These are extremely expensive planes, both to buy and to operate. But the rewards are breathtaking. The configuration of the TBM series is very much like an upsized version of the Bonanza A36 or Piper […]

Even though not many pilots think of the Cirrus SR22 as a family plane, a lot of Cirrus pilots do, and their missions back up the belief. This is well known to the company, which markets its planes through its “Cirrus Life” brand initiative. The idea is that when you buy a Cirrus, you’re not […]

So much has been written about the Skylane, and for good reason. It is one of the most popular planes in the history of aviation, both in terms of numbers built and capability. There’s very little the Cessna 182 can’t do, and one of the things it excels at is hauling a good load, doing […]

For many years, Beechcraft singles were the epitome of high-end personal flying, and with the introduction in the mid-1960s of the six-seat A36 model, Beechcraft (today owned by Textron Aviation) created what might be the perfect piston-powered family transportation plane. The A36 Bonanza simply checks all the boxes. Like the Cherokee Six, it features a […]

Piper’s six-seater, introduced in the 1960s, looked pretty much like what it was, a stretched-out version of one of Piper’s wildly popular, four-seat PA-28s. And then some. The “then some” part is critical here because Piper designed the plane right. Instead of merely giving it a stretched fuselage and a couple more seats, Piper’s designers […]

This is one plane you probably didn’t expect to see here, but it is a great family plane—so long as the kids are still little, that is. It’s easy to fly, has fantastic visibility, has room for bags (so long as the packing planners are prudent), and is both fast enough, around 135 knots, in […]