Plastic Pilot

Someone recently attracted my attention to an interesting part of the DA40 aircraft flight manual: the maximal landing mass. Large airplanes (business jets and airliners) often have can’t land at the maximum take-off weight, because of landing gear structural constraints. If the landing has to be anticipated, the crew must dump or burn fuel, to get the weight within limits (read this post on fuel-dumping).

This is restriction is quite common on large aircrafts, but I’ve never seen it on a single engine plane before. The AFM defines the maximum landing mass as “The highest mass for landing conditions at the maximum descent velocity. This velocity was used in the strength calculations to determine the landing gear loads during a particularly hard landing.”

To talk numbers, the maximum take-off weight is 2535 lbs, and the maximum landing mass is 2407 lbs, 128 lbs lighter. This difference represents 19 US gallons of Jet-A1, or 3 hours of flying at cruise power ! The DA40 has no fuel dumping mechanism.

An “Overweight landing procedure” is defined in the “abnormal procedures” section of the AFM. It consists only in an increase of approach speed. Normal approach speed with a weight of 2407 lbs is 67 knots, and it must be increased to 71 knots for a weight of 2535 lbs. The AFM says no more - specifically, it makes no mention of what has to be done after an overweight landing.

A look at the aircraft maintenance manual do not help. The “hard landing check” procedure is defined, but its sole trigger is when the pilot declares a hard landing. It does not even mentions the maximum landing mass.

The question which arise from these findings is to know how legal it is to fly, in examples, circuits at maximum take-off weight, or take-off with three persons on board, fly for one hour, and land. If any landing above maximum landing mass means inspection by a mechanic, operating the DA40 would require such inspections after most flights…

If any expert wants to comment, this will help making things clearer to me…

Diamond received approval from both EASA and Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) to produce DA40-TDI airplanes in its new facility in Binzhou, China. According to Diamond’s press release, the 400′000 square feet factory will deliver 80 G1000 equipped DA40-TDI in 2008. The planes produced in China will be delivered to customers on the Asia area market.

This is Diamond’s third manufacturing facility, complementing the one in Wiener-Neustadt (Austria) and London (Ontario, Canada). Strategically speaking, having an additional facility in China sounds a good idea. As the planes will be produced local market, no europan or american jobs will be lost because of this.

If you missed it, there has been a huge reaction when Cessna announced that the SkyCatcher LSA would be assembled in China, even for the US market. I’m not judging Cessna’s decision nor buyers reaction, but the way Cessna did manage the communication and marketing issues relating to it.

Once again Diamond’s management seem to do things correctly: produce locally to reduce part of the cost and not upset customers.

It will also be interesting in mid-term to monitor incident statistics. As all planes will be produced on the local continent, it will be possible to see if “Made In China” planes will do better or worse than their “Made In UK” or “Made In Canada” sisters. Only time will tell…

When I wrote the post about all planes I flew, I dropped a few lines about each, without any kind of classification. As all pilots, I however have preferences. My favorite plane (amongst those I flew) is the PA32 Saratoga , because of its speed, performance, and because those I fly are well equipped.

The DA40 TDI comes in second, because it’s fun to fly, and operate, and the performances are good in mountain thanks to the turbo diesel engine. The G1000 version is much more attractive to me for obvious reasons.

So, what about you ? Which is your favorite type of aircraft, and why ? Please, read the question again before posting your comment. I don’t ask for planes you don’t like, no negative criticism here. What I ask you for is your favorite type amongst all those you flew or fly. Go ahead !