38 | SEPTEMBER 2019 FLYINGMAG.COMbecome a DiamondShare member in
another DA62, as a form of backup
lift. After all, not every mission
requires a seven-passenger twin
that can cruise at nearly 200 knots
and f ly more than 1,000 nautical
miles between fill-ups.
As you might imagine, transi-
tioning from steam-gauge Cessna
Skyhawks to a brand-new Diamond
DA40 to a high-performance Cirrus
SR22T and then training to f ly the
Diamond DA62, only to wind up back
in a Skyhawk, has been somewhat
emotionally def lating. Trips I used to
be able to do nonstop comfortably in
three hours or so in the Cirrus take
much longer in the 172 and, of course,
necessitate a stop for fuel. I’ve easily
done Oshkosh to New Jersey nonstop
with a good tailwind in the Cirrus;
my previous trip in a 172 took nine
hours with stops in Michigan and
Ohio. But an airplane is an airplane,
and as the saying goes, beggars can’t
be choosers. Until I bite the bullet
and decide to buy an airplane of my
own—or find a DA62 to f ly—I must
accept the rather minor limitations
that the sharing economy can place
on a pilot like me.
The long-percolating idea of
transitioning to the DA62 has natu-
rally led to comparisons between the
Diamond twin and the Cirrus single.
For several years now, the SR22 has
reigned supreme as the top-selling
piston GA airplane in the world. When
I did the original flight-report article on
the then-just-certified DA62 in 2015,
I noted it was an exceptional airplane,
but I also predicted it wouldn’t sell verywell. That prognostication has proved
to be true, but I’d also noted in that arti-
cle the meager sales wouldn’t be the
DA62’s fault. Diamond’s flagship twin
is an amazing machine—it is, in truth,
the most technologically sophisticated
and capable GA twin ever produced.
But new-airplane buyers are reso-
lutely convinced of the superiority of
high-performance piston singles. It’s
become so ingrained in their psyches
that during the buying process the idea
of purchasing a twin rarely factors in
when they start researching which
airplane to purchase.
That’s a mistake. The DA62 stacks
up incredibly well against the SR22,
and in many ways, it is the supe-
rior airplane. If I was in the market
for a new high-performance piston
GA airplane, the Cirrus would be
on my list, of course, along with theMooney Ovation and Acclaim Ultra
models, Piper M350, and the DA62.
Where the DA62 tips the argument
in its favor is the redundancy of a
second engine. And not just in terms
of having two engines in case of an
engine failure, although that ’s cer-
tainly a worthwhile consideration,
especially if you’ll be flying long
distances in hard IFR, over water
or at night. A second engine also
offers a redundant power source to
run the avionics, important in the
tech-heavy era in which we live.
There was a time when moving up to a
twin was something every pilot dreamed
of doing. The pendulum has swung com-
pletely the other way; today, very few
pilots want to go anywhere near a twin.
Why is that? Flying magazine may bear
some of the blame since it was our own
Dick Collins who began pointing outDA
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DiamondShare is a shared-leasing program that
allows as many as three pilots to lease hours in a
Diamond aircraft owned by one other pilot. Pricing
varies by individual program, but in general, the way
it works is each DiamondShare member pays the
aircraft owner a monthly fee which guarantees them
a certain number of hours in the airplane per year.
For example, the DiamondShare program in a DA40
could work like this: Each member pays the aircraft
owner $1,200 per month, which grants them 100
hours of access per year. The monthly fee normally
includes costs for hangar, insurance, maintenance
and database updates, with the only additional cost
being for the fuel each pilot uses. Pilots schedule
time online and agree to make only a certain number
of simultaneous reservations to ensure adequate
aircraft availability. The monthly lease charge in a
DA42 twin is roughly double that of the DA40, and
the charge for a DA62 membership is normally about
three times as much.
HOW DIAMONDSHARE WORKS