When Continental Motors announced last summer that it had bought the assets of Thielert Aircraft Engines, it promised to move aggressively to expand the aerodiesel market. In April, it made the first delivery on that claim when Piper announced the Archer DX, its first diesel-powered aircraft and perhaps the first U.S.-manufactured model to make it through the cert hoops to market.
Piper unveiled the Archer DX at the Aero show in Friedrichshafen, Germany, for good reason. Given the DX’s high purchase price—call it $400,000—and persistent high engine replacement costs, the DX’s economics appear realistic only in parts of the world where avgas is either substantially more expensive than it is in the U.S. or not available at all. That would be Europe, Asia and eventually Africa, as the emerging economies there learn to fly.