Piper M600

A Clean sheet wing, more power, touchscreen avionics and stylish interior enhancements lift Piper's latest incarnation of the classics PA 46 to new heights.

- Stephen Pope

They say that when one door closes, another opens. The trick is to stop looking at the closed door long enough to see which door is ajar. For Piper, the closed door was the abortive Altaire single-engine jet, an airplane many likened to a mini DC-10 with its Williams turbofan engine integrated weirdly into the tail. The door that opened, meanwhile, was a new version of the Meridian turboprop, which Piper would end up naming the M600.

In October 2011, with the aviation industry still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession, Piper’s new CEO, Simon Caldecott, announced the “indefinite suspension” of the Altaire jet despite the program essentially being on time and on budget. The market for very light jets appeared less certain than it had in the midst of the real-estate-bubble fueled frenzy prior to 2008, and so the big question for Piper at the time was: What the heck do we do next?

The answer turned out to be a further evolution of the Meridian turboprop single that would make it stand out against a backdrop of pricier turboprops and a new crop of light jets. To pull it off, four big changes were needed. The first, and the most important, entailed designing a new wing. Piper also decided to add the latest Garmin touchscreen avionics, boost the new model’s flat-rated horsepower, and improve the interior.

Piper took some of what it learned from the Altaire program and applied it to the design and manufacturing of the M600. This latest iteration of the PA-46 now features a clean-sheet wing, Garmin G3000 avionics, an extra 100 shp compared with the M500, and stylish interior enhancements that elevate the airplane well above the original Malibu Meridian introduced to the market almost 20 years ago. The changes also now put the M600 in rarefied territory within striking distance of some pricier turbine options.