Piaggio P180 Avianti

[Bill Von Sennet]

There are currently 11 P180's in the air that have VNR flight numbers.

VNR153 155 and 163 are due to land soon at KLBE

One has a flight plan to continue to Little Rock, another to Houston.

The third one doesn't have a flightplan filed for departure yet. So it may be here to demonstrate to L J Aviation.

[Tom Goodrick]

Anyone who might consider an Eclipse should give serious consideration to an Avanti. It is better in all aspects I can see. It even carries two more passengers. At 400 knots it is at least as fast.

I just checked Avanti's airborne this evening and found six - the same number as the active Aero Commander 500's as a coincidence. While most were owned by the Piaggio group with VNR flight numbers, there was one with an N number, owned by a private company, Aviation Enterprises, Inc of Wilmington, DE. But the aircraft is based in the West. Just enter P180 for type to see a list of all that are flying at any moment.

N780CA flies in the region of California, Nevada and Utah. It lands frequently at Provo, UT, (KPVU) but also at John Wayne Airport (KSNA). On FlightAware you can see over two months of activity of the aircraft. It is very active, indeed. Among the interesting flight, indicating the utility of the aircraft was a flight from KLAS to KCOE, to Mexico, and from the West to the East coast. It left Provo and flew to Teterboro, NJ via Nashville and returned to John Wayne via KLBF (North Platt, NE). It is a busy airplane.

[Tom Goodrick]

I have upgraded the FD for the Avanti on my web site so it reflects the changes in the new Avanti II. The package includes the aircraft, panel, new sound and new FD files. There is also a memo on flying turboprop aircraft. I posted a copy of this in the Aircraft performance, "Flying Turboprops" section of this Forum.

I have not yet updated the text on the web site.

[Bill Von Sennet]

Hi Tom,

I downloaded the Avanti and took it on a short hop from KPVD to KHFD (Providence to Hartford) Everything is working great. It will take me some practice to get proficient. The workload is pretty high for a 60 mile flight (climb to 7300' then start down) But it should work well on 200nm + flights. I only used 17 gal. curious to see what the range is with full tanks.

Thanks!

[Allen Peterson]

I downloaded the Avanti, too, it looks very good. I'm flying from KSEA to KCOE, or was. I forgot to watch the speed and something broke, so I'm back at KSEA again. I plan to land on the long runway at KCOE, it has an ILS.
Thanks for the upgrade, Tom

[Tom Goodrick]

When you fly any aircraft above 15,000 ft, make sure you have "crash with structural damage" turned OFF. The reason is that wind speeds get high and large direction shifts are common. Those will break any airplane. They are not physically possible in the atmosphere. So turning off this damage will render them inconsequencial.

Today I flew a Beech Premier from Huntsville to the San Francisco area and saw several of those large direction shifts with winds of 85 to 105 knots at 40,000 ft. I saw shifts of 40 to 150 degrees. With no structural failure possible, you just get an interesting ride for about 15 seconds.

Supposedly the Avanti gets its best speed at 31,000 ft. But it will do well at any altitude from 25,000 ft to 35,000 ft. Supposedly it has best economy near 40,000 ft. But up there you'll get runover by all the fanjets. Most common altitudes are probably from 25,000 ft to 31,000 ft. Speeds will be 350-380 knots. For this we can check the FlightAware reports. They give speed and altitude - expected and actual (but actual speeds include wind).

[Bill Von Sennet]

I flew from Latrobe to Garden City KS checking the range. I had about 100 gal left over, but I flew with zero winds (which is not realistic)

Avantair has the exclusive right to do fractional ownership sales. They have 50 aircraft with more on order.

Either Avantair or Piaggio talk about cruising at 41,000' but that is probably marketing dept hyperbole.

[Tom Goodrick]

Bill, I think you must have flown that trip at too low an altitude or at an inefficient power setting because the model is capable of much greater range. But 100 gallons still permits a fair amount of flying. The FLYING article gives max range as 1420 nm at 39,000 ft and 357 knots. As you go higher in altitude, there is a very big reduction in fuel flow. But it should also be noted that the performance is sensitive to weight.

Today I started a trip from KLBE to KABQ - about 1330 nm - and found the model over-performed in some ways. I carried six pax with just a little baggage allowing full fuel. I stopped the flight after 41 minutes. It reached cruise altitude of 40,000 ft in 18 minutes. The power gauges and GPS indicated it had plenty of flight time available compared to the flight time needed. When I stopped the flight after 41 minutes, it had 2:44 to go to ABQ and enough fuel for 5 more hours of flight.

I need to work on the high speed / high altitude aspects of its flight. For additional discussions of the FS model, I'll start a thread on the Flight Sim section of this Forum.

I went to FlightAware tonight and got some samples of flight plan data for the P180. (Values in parens are actual speeds observed by the ATC.):

390 at 32,000
391 at 33,000 (actual 496 kts -wind?)
397 at 30,000
375 at 37,000
397 at 31,000
397 at 30,000
317 at 14,000
370 at 25,000 (367)
362 at 34,000