The trainer version of the Piper Archer III has led very strong third-quarter delivery results for Piper Aircraft.
With deliveries of around 22 airframes, the Archer TX was one of the major contributors to an encouraging result overall for the Florida manufacturer.
Piper delivered 42 aircraft for the July-September 2017 quarter worth $US48.6 million. The 2017 year-to-date revenue also grew over the same period in 2016 with a nearly $US45 million or 57% increase. Piper Archer deliveries continue to expand with 55% more units delivered than for YTD 2016.
"In Q3, our continued investments across all of our products as well as our commitment to a made to order business model has helped drive another quarter of strong growth and sales expansion and has also resulted in the lowest dealer inventory levels that we have seen in 5 years," said President and CEO, Simon Caldecott.
"As we look forward to the last quarter of the year, deliveries of our value leading products are expected to continue to increase with deliveries of our robust primary aircraft trainers expected to reach their highest level in 14 years."
Around 45 Archers are delivered each year, with fleet sales to large operators such as the University of North Dakota and ATP Flight School accounting for the bulk of shipments.
“Piper’s leadership in global trainer sales is evidenced by our customer base which include the most prestigious flight training institutions in the world," said Piper Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Customer Support, Ron Gunnarson.
"Our complete line up of training aircraft along with their advanced avionics offers flight schools the ease of doing business with a single vendor as well as a the economies of scale that come with standardised fleet.”
Piper expects to deliver up to 87 PA-28s this year, made up of a combination of the Archer and the complex, single-engined Arrow. If achieved, the company says it will have increased its market share by 15% over the past five years.