THE FUTURE IS HERE

The star at this year’s Aero Expo South Africa, held at Wonderboom, was the Diamond DA-62. The demo aircraft was flown out to South Africa especially for the event – showing the easy capability of this latest generation piston twin.

- Guy Leitch and Diamond Aircraft

FLIGHT TEST: THE DIAMOND DA-62

AIRCRAFT SHOULD BE CUTTING EDGE technology, yet it is cars that have evolved, not planes. Cars have advanced technologically and in comfort and performance enormously over the past 60 years. Light aircraft are however still stuck in a time warp – with the mainstream piston twins being the geriatric 50-plus-year-old Beechcraft Baron and Piper Seneca.

The DA-62 displayed at Aero SA 2023 was my second opportunity to experience this remarkable plane – which has rewritten the performance, safety and comfort standards of piston twins – and, dare I say, rendered the two American offerings painfully obsolete. And each time I check it out I am more impressed than ever.

The Big Idea 

Finally there is a genuinely modern new piston aircraft – and it shows the American manufacturer's litigation-induced inability to create new products in a poor light. Even the normally pro-USA and conservative Flying magazine reckoned that the DA-62 belongs on “the shortlist of the greatest light twins ever. In a word, it’s a winner.”

You have to fly the Diamond to appreciate it. It just does everything better, especially when compared to twins such as the Baron 58 and Seneca 5 with which it directly competes.

A King Air salesman once said to me that anything man-made will eventually fail. And piston engines are definitely fallible. So there will always be a market for light twins – if only they were better than the aforementioned Baron and ‘Sneaker’.