Passenger Capacity:              8-9

 

Air Speed:                               462 mph

 

Range:                                     1737 nm

 

Baggage Capacity:                  44 cuft

The Piaggio Avanti is an Italian twin-engine turboprop aircraft produced by Piaggio Aero. It seats up to nine passengers in a pressurized cabin, and may be flown by one or two pilots. The design uses a small forward wing and a main wing combination that places the wing spars outside of the passenger cabin area. Although the front wing resembles a canard configuration, a conventional horizontal stabilizer on the tail provides longitudinal stability and pitch trim. It features a lifting laminar flow fuselage and has engines in a pusher configuration.

 

In attempting to understand the Piaggio Avanti, you need to begin by forgetting everything you thought you knew about turboprop-powered airplanes. The idea behind the Avanti has always been remarkably simple and completely outside the turboprop box. Think of the Avanti as a jet with props and you’ll be close to the mark, though in many respects, it’s not an easy mental shift to make. Turboprops behave in certain ways, and jets in other ways, but the Avanti is a true hybrid, a product that blends the best traits from two very different airplane categories to arrive at some third niche, which at present it occupies by itself.