The Airplane Geeks Aircraft of the Week: Piper PA-46 Malibu

First flown on November 30, 1979 the PA-46-300T Malibu was a Six place piston engine light aircraft.   It was designed to compete with Cessna’s P-210 Centurion.  It was pressurized and the third such aircraft to after the P-210 and the Mooney M22

           

Originally sold with  Teledyne Continental Motors TSIO-520BE engine rated at  310 Horsepower.  This gave the aircraft a cruising range of 1, 550 nautical miles.  The engine specified to be flown at lean of Peak mixture.  Which made the aircraft very fuel efficient.

A 350P  flown by Steve Stout. N9114Bravo made three speed records.  Seattle to New York with an average speed of 259.27 MPH on November 23^rd 1987 . Followed by Detroit to DC at 395.96 MPH on January 4, 1989 and Chicago to Toronto on January 8^th, 1989 with a blistering 493. 13 MPH.

As I said previously the TSIO-520BE was designed to be an efficient engine, with a fuel mixture set at  TIT Lean of Peak.   This eventually caused the demise of the Continental powered Malibu. Piper cancelled the version after numerous accidents caused by the engine overheating and excessive cylinder pressures.   One of the causes of this was due to pilots flying the aircraft with a setting of Rich of Peak that was commonplace over time.   I now defer to the Wiseman of Aviation to briefly talk about the difference.

In 1988 Piper re-winged the PA-46 and added a Lycoming TIO-540-AE2 350 Horsepower engine.  This aircraft is still in production at the Piper Malibu Mirage.

In 1997 Piper again re-strengthened the wing and added the P&W PT-6.  The Malibu Meridian also had larger control surfaces to accommodate the additional thrust of the PT-6.  The Meridian is equipped with a three screen G-1000 Garmin and has GFC-700 autopilot.