JULY 2022. Blues Vol 38 No. 7

on the market. Today, there are
only five serious contenders —
and apart from the seven-place
DA62, only two of these, the
Beech Baron G58 and Piper Seneca
V, offer more than four seats.
A Flying SUV
Seven seats in a twin in this
class, by the way, is quite an
engineering feat. I’m not a fan
of describing any airplane as an
“aerial SUV” — even if, yes, it’s
roomy inside and has a decent
payload — because the label is
almost always an exaggeration
dreamed up by someone in the
marketing department. But in the
case of the DA62 it would be ignoring
a glaringly obvious design
characteristic not to mention it.
With its third-row seating option,
oversize doors and seats
that fold flat to accommodate
bulky items, there’s no other way
to say it — the DA62 is a sport
utility vehicle with wings.
That’s no accident. In developing
this airplane as an evolutionary
step up from the four-seat
DA42, Diamond Aircraft founder
and CEO Christian Dries challenged
his engineering team to
create a safe, simple-to-operate,
fuel-efficient twin and wrap it
around a passenger compartment
mimicking the latest luxury
SUVs. Unlike gas-guzzling sport
utility vehicles, though, the DA62
boasts outstanding fuel economy.
Its twin 180-horsepower
Austro AE330 diesel engines
burn less than 10 gallons per
hour per side at maximum continuous
power, propelling the
airplane to a top speed of right
around 200 knots. Pull the throttles
back to 75 percent power
and the speed is still a respectable
187 ktas, but fuel burn
drops to just 7.4 gph per side
— an impressive 14.8 gph total
that’s lower than a number of
light-piston singles can manage
on one engine.
The DA62’s cabin features two
seats up front, three in the middle
row and two more in back.
They fold flat for an SUV-like
experience.
I had the chance to spend
a couple of days flying the
DA62 recently on a visit to the
Diamond Aircraft factory at
the company-owned Wiener
Neustadt East Airport south of
Vienna. I came away from the
experience persuaded that, for
the right buyer, this is very nearly
the ideal airplane. If, for example,
you need seven seats versus
the five or six offered in competing
airplanes, the DA62 makes
perfect sense. If you also don’t
have access to a ready supply of
100LL avgas, the DA62 is a great
alternative to gasoline-powered
models. And if you simply feel
more comfortable flying over
inhospitable terrain or water,
sometimes at night, and desire
the power and systems redundancy
that come with a second
engine, the DA62 should absolutely
be on your shopping list.
There are other reasons to like
the DA62 as well. One of the
characteristics that left an impression
on me is how dirt simple
this airplane is to operate.
Take the engine start procedure,
for example. It involves the easyas-pie
steps of hitting the master
switch, flipping the engine
master on, waiting a moment
to ensure the glow plug annunciation
is out and then pushing
the engine start button. That’s it.
The ¬Austro diesels come to life
in an instant as the dual-channel
full authority -digital engine
controls (fadec) manage rpm
and continuously check for faults
while your only other job is to
glance at the oil pressure indication.
As long as the gauges are in
the green, you’re good to go.
The before-takeoff run-up procedure
is equally as stress free.
It involves setting the parking
brake, manually selecting the A
and B channels of the electronic
engine control units (EECU) to
ensure both are online, and then
pushing and holding the engine
run-up buttons. Here’s where
the magic starts as the AE330’s
fadec computers automatically
increase power to 1,950 rpm
and perform a number of health
checks, including cycling the
props. The throttles never physically
move and there aren’t any
prop levers to move in the first
place. If no fault messages ¬appear
on the Garmin G1000 primary
flight display when the test
sequence is completed, you’re
ready for departure.
In this case, that meant swinging
the airplane onto Wiener
Neustadt’s Runway 10 with a
25-knot direct crosswind blowing
from the left. I added a fistful
of that smooth diesel power
and, per the book, rotated at 80
knots. Acceleration to 95 knots
for the climb-out was brisk as
I began the bizarre sequence
of noise-abatement twists and
turns designed to keep air traffic
away from residential areas as
well as a military airfield right
next door to the airport.
The DA62’s diesel engines are
encased in cowlings that seem
oddly misshapen, a result of
packaging Mercedes-Benz car
engines on an airplane.
Climbing to 5,000 feet at 110
kias, the DA62 maintained a
1,450 fpm rate of climb at our
midweight with two on board
and half fuel. Accelerating to
a cruise climb speed of 128
kias produced a 1,200 fpm rate
through 8,000 feet. That’s when
I asked my host in the right seat,
Diamond Aircraft director of
flight operations Martin Scherrer,
for a demonstration of the DA62’s
¬single-engine performance.
Still climbing, at his direction I
flicked off the left engine master
switch (the left is the critical engine
in the DA62). The ¬propeller
immediately stopped, automatically
feathering as it did so.
The airplane lurched left as a
result of loss of thrust on that
side, and I instinctively raised the
left wing, stepped on the rudder,
and then dialed in rudder trim
to compensate. After that, the
airplane was as easy to fly on
one engine as on two. Earning a
multiengine rating in a DA62 with
its two power levers (opposed
to the usual six levers found in
most piston twins) would almost
be cheating, I decided. I let the
speed come back to the 87-knot
blue line (single-engine best
rate-of-climb airspeed) and was
impressed to see us still climbing
at 450 fpm.
Speed Test
Next I wanted to evaluate the
DA62’s cruise performance to
see if this really is a 200-knot
airplane as Dries originally envisioned.
I leveled off at 14,000
feet with the throttles pushed
full forward to max continuous
power of 95 percent and
let the speed build. On this day,
slightly warmer than standard
and a little lower than optimal, I
managed to coax 195 ktas from
those twin AE330s while burning
18.6 gph. Hitting 200 knots in a
Beech Baron in similar conditions
would result in a fuel consumption
of around 30 gph, so I
wasn’t terribly disappointed with
the results I was seeing.
I tried out a variety of power
settings and found what I
considered a sweet spot at 60
percent power showing 170 ktas
and 11.8 gph fuel consumption.
After heading lower and trying
a series of steep turns and
power-on and -off stalls (which
were, predictably, nonevents
with nothing more dramatic than
a slight wing drop in the stalls),
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