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most aviation prognosticators believe there will be an increase in fleet operators as cities become more crowded. City planners are realiz- ing small airlines can move people quite efficiently from small airports in rural areas to and from big cities.
And then there’s the owner-flown market – the market I’ve spent my last two decades serving. This mar- ket is flush with super cool turbine airplanes that are the epitome of style and speed, but few can oper- ate from a grass strip. If you own a ranch with a grass strip and a Piper Meridian, TBM, Vision Jet or King Air, you’ve dreamed of the day you could land at your ranch. But none of those airplanes are really made for rough strips. You might land there 30 times with success, but the first time you have a nose gear collapse, an engine tear-down, off-pavement maintenance or an insurance claim, you’ll land on the asphalt and then drive to the beloved ranch.
What has been interesting to me is that in the last two months, I’ve had two Piper Meridian owners ap- proach me to sell their Meridian so they can buy a Kodiak 900. With 200 KTAS cruise, full icing capability, and enough room for three times as much load, the Kodiak will show up to the ranch far faster than the Merid- ian because of the cumbersome and lengthy drive from the airport. The Kodiak 900 can bridge the gap from asphalt to grass or dirt with style and speed.
If you want to do an interesting study, enter a hypothetical Kodiak 900 into your f light planning soft- ware (Foref light or FltPlan) and contrast the time-to-fly with any of the other much faster turboprop air- planes on the market. Except on the longest of flights, the slower Kodiak 900 will show up only minutes behind the faster turboprops. And, since it goes from asphalt to grass, the Kodiak 900 will beat the asphalt-requiring
turboprops every time if landing off paved runways.
So, will Daher’s bet on making the Kodiak bigger, better, faster and stronger win sales in the market- place? It appears so. Kodiak received the type certificate in late July 2022, and they have already sold all the production capability through the summer of 2023. The much improved Kodiak 900 is grasping market share, and I suspect there’ll be a long pro- duction history. Now, where are my fishing poles and camping gear?
Joe Casey is an FAA-DPE and an ATP, CFI, CFII (A/H), MEI, CFIG, CFIH, as well as a retired U.S. Army UH60 standardization instructor/ex- aminer. An active instructor in the PA46 and King Air markets, he has accumulated 16,000-plus hours of flight time, with more than 5,200 dual-given as a flight instructor. Contact Joe at joe@flycasey.com or 903.721.9549.
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December 2022 / TWIN & TURBINE • 17