Cessna Denali
These days, the Cessna and Beech marques reside within Textron Aviation, which produces the world’s largest range of business and general aviation aircraft. There’s already a Cessna for just about every market segment, so, it was refreshing, exciting–and well, just plain interesting–to hear the company announce a completely new, single-engine turbo-prop, at EAA Airventure at Oshkosh in 2015.
It was also a bit surprising, given that the highly successful Cessna 208 Caravan has been the single-prop weight-lifting champion for 36 years.
However, the Caravan can’t do everything, and Textron Aviation clearly saw the growing sales of new generation turboprop singles, including the Pilatus PC-12 and speedy Daher TBM pressurised propjets, which like the Caravan, utilise Pratt & Whitney Canada’s PT-6A turbine engine.
To go with its clean-sheet airframe…