Introducing the Piper M700

The 700-shaft-horsepower turboprop has a Pratt & Whitney PT6A-52 engine, 30,000-foot ceiling, a 300-knot maximum cruise speed, and a range of more than 1,400 nautical miles at regular cruise power.

“The M700 Fury is a beautifully efficient, cross-country thoroughbred that gives our customers a performance-based flight experience with economics never seen before,” said Piper President and CEO John Calcagno.

The M700 is an upgrade to the 600-horsepower M600 that was FAA certified in 2016. It includes some of its predecessor’s most popular features including Garmin G3000 avionics, an autothrottle, and the HALO Autoland system.

The higher horsepower of the M700 is estimated to provide a 30-percent increase in rate of climb over the M600, a 27-knot jump in maximum true airspeed (from 274 knots true airspeed to 301 KTAS), and a 368-nm increase in range.

Piper introduced its seminal, six-seat PA–46 in 1983, and that original design has branched out into a versatile series of piston, pressurized, and turboprop variants. The first production M700 is the 1,000th PA–46 Piper has produced.

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Piper has been working on the M700 for more than a year while keeping it under wraps. The company is flying two aircraft for FAA certification tests and expects to achieve FAA certification in the first quarter. Customer deliveries are scheduled to begin immediately thereafter.

Piper declined to provide a retail price for the M700, but company officials said it would be “more than $1 million less” than the competition.

France’s Daher TBM models have long been the performance leader in six-seat, single-engine turboprops. Daher’s most current models have Pratt & Whitney PT6A engines of about 850 horsepower, 31,000-foot ceilings, a top speed of about 330 knots, and list prices of more than $4 million.