Diamond Aircraft Industries has earned Canadian certification of its DA42 L360. The airplane is equipped with two 180-hp Lycoming IO-360 engines and has been designed primarily as a multiengine trainer to compete with Piper’s Seminole series of light twins.
The certification allows production of the airplane at the company’s London, Ontario, plant, as well as factory retrofit of earlier-model DA42 Twin Stars powered by Thielert TAE 1.7 and 2.0-liter Centurion turbodiesel engines. The DA42 L360 joins the DA42 NG, which was recently certified by the European Aviation and Safety Agency (EASA). FAA certification of both these new airplanes is expected soon. The DA42 NG uses Diamond’s own Austro 3000 turbodiesel engine.
The Theilert engines proved to have several service issues, and maintenance schedules that forced customers to replace and inspect costly components such as clutches and high-pressure fuel pumps at frequent intervals. By ditching the Thielerts, Diamond hopes to avoid those sorts of problems, and eventually offer AE3000 TBOs as high as 2,000 hours.
A well-equipped DA42 L360 is priced at $599,500. Standard equipment includes a Garmin G1000 avionics suite. A TKS ice protection system is optional, and flight-into-known-icing certification using the TKS system is pending.
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