Piper Aircraft has announced the order of 15 additional Archer TXs to ATP Flight School. The delivery comes as part of the original three-year agreement made in April of 2013 for up to 100 aircraft.
ATP, America’s largest flight school, specializes in airline pilot training and pilot career development. The school initially agreed to purchase a fleet of 15 Piper Archer TX single-engine, piston-powered advanced training aircraft for delivery in late 2013, with the option for 85 additional Archers.
“This follow-on fleet transaction is a display of ATP’s ongoing confidence in Piper Aircraft,” said Piper President and CEO Simon Caldecott. “Our training aircraft continue to impress students and instructors, delivering unmatched performance with countless hours of flight school training around the world.”
“ATP has been transitioning our fleet to Piper aircraft because they offer reliability, technological flexibility in cockpit avionics and instrumentation, and unsurpassed operational economy,” said ATP Vice President Jim Koziarski. “We look forward to integrating these new Piper Archer TXs into our fleet.”
ATP Piper Archers are primarily utilized by ATP’s Airline Career Pilot Program students. This program provides students with an airline-sponsored career track from zero experience to airline pilot job in just two years, demanding a technologically advanced and reliable training platform to meet the professional training objectives of the program. Satisfying this role, the Archer has easily integrated into ATP’s fleet and provides students with a seamless transition to ATP’s multi-engine fleet of over 100 similarly equipped Piper Seminoles.
As the need for more single-engine Piper training aircraft increases, ATP has been exercising their option to take additional Archers – continuing to transition to a predominately Piper training aircraft fleet. At this rate of increase, Piper will have delivered 70 of the 100 training aircraft to ATP by the end of 2016.
All of the new ATP airplanes under the agreement with Piper will be equipped with Garmin G500 glass cockpit avionics suites. The G500 is a PFD/MFD dual-screen electronic flight display. Dual 6.5-in. LCDs, mounted side-by-side in the bezel, put both Primary Flight Display (PFD) and Multifunction Display (MFD) capabilities directly in instructor and student field of view to help streamline instrument scanning and enhance situational awareness.
