Just two years after it marked the milestone of its 1,000th delivery of the TBM series, Daher has added 100 more tallies in the book for the single-engine turboprop models.
The company announced this week it has handed over a TBM 960 to serial owner Bruce McCollum, who makes this his third TBM. McCollum, an active private pilot, has owned a TBM 850 and a TBM 900. He met the airplane at Daher’s manufacturing complex in Tarbes, France, in order to fly the airplane back across the Atlantic where he would formally take possession at a ceremony at the company’s service center in Pompano Beach.
“I had a great tour of the factory in Tarbes, which was very impressive: you can feel the dedication of the Daher teams who design, build and constantly fine-tune the TBM,” McCollum said. “Additionally, the breadth of aerostructures that Daher makes for such leading aircraft producers as Airbus, Dassault, and Gulfstream also is impressive. Having this diversity contributes to Daher’s strength as a company and its ability for future development of the TBM.”
The TBM 960 and 910
The TBM line’s latest expressions are in the TBM 960—reviewed in FLYING’s Q3 2022 print edition—and the TBM 910. The 960 is powered by the Pratt & Whitney PT6E-66XT powerplant and features the Garmin G3000 integrated flight deck up front, while the 910 utilizes the PT6A-66D engine and hosts the Garmin G1000 Nxi avionics suite in the cockpit.
The TBM series launched with the TBM 700 in 1990—the first single-engine, pressurized turboprop made for the civilian market—and continued with the higher-horsepower TBM 850 in 2006. The 900 series débuted in 2014.
Nicolas Chabbert, senior vice president of Daher’s Aircraft Division, said in a statement that “the TBM airplane family has distinguished itself through constant improvements in environmental efficiency and operational safety—delivering speed at much lower fuel consumption than competing jets, and incorporating enhancements in flight envelope protection and situational awareness.
“The 1,100th delivery is an achievement that we owe to our faithful customers for their continued confidence, and which is built on the dedication of our Daher teams in engineering, flight test, production and support,” Chabbert said.
