Plane & Pilot 2017 Buyer’s Guide: Single-Engine Piston Planes

Newcomers, upgrades, and old favorites: 20 piston singles for 2017.

Plane & Pilot

Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 08:13 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The market for piston singles offers a diverse range of aircraft, from utility trainers to pressurized six-place screamers, including significant updates to existing models and new certifications.
Modern piston singles heavily feature advanced avionics, with Garmin's G1000 NXi/Perspective+ and G3000 touch-controlled suites being prominent across many models, enhancing safety and user experience.
The Cirrus SR22 G6 remains the best-selling piston single, distinguished by its updated avionics and standard whole-airplane recovery parachute system.
Key advancements across the featured aircraft include improved comfort, increased speed and range, enhanced safety features (like anti-icing and synthetic vision), and better pilot/passenger amenities.

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Tecnam P2010

A relative newcomer to the scene, the Tecnam P2010 is a four-seat, fixed-gear general-purpose single with a carbon-fiber fuselage and metal wings. The Italian-produced model is one of a number of designs from Tecnam in a number of categories, and the Part 23-certificated 2010 is a compelling product in many ways. When comparing it to existing planes, it’s hard to find an equivalent model. It’s roomy, easy on the eyes, pretty fast at 140 knots, it carries a good useful load (925 pounds), and it has a competitive range at better than 700 nm. The P2010, in many ways, to use well-known models as points of comparison, is more like a Skylane than a Skyhawk, but it’s a plane that’s lighter to the touch and on the controls than the legendary Cessna single. The standard avionics package is the Garmin G500 system, though the G1000 integrated suite is available, as well.

Niche: Fixed-gear trainer/utility

Base Price: $369,000

Competitors: Diamond DA40, Cirrus SR20, Cessna 182 Skylane, Piper Archer

Read our Tecnam P2010 pilot report.

Tecnam P2010 Specifications

Learn more at Tecnam.