2025 FLYING Buyers Guide: Pistons

Slowly increasing availability of unleaded avgas is among the market developments for piston-engine airplanes.

Rick Durden

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 01:57 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Ryan Ewing

CubCrafters XCub [Courtesy: CubCrafters]

Key Takeaways:

Cirrus and Tecnam experienced strong sales growth in 2024, driven by popular new models and diverse offerings, while Diamond and Textron Aviation maintained consistent sales, notably with the Cessna 172.
Demand for flight training aircraft (e.g., Cessna 172, Piper Archer, Tecnam P-Mentor) and diesel-powered twins (Diamond DA42/DA62) are significant market drivers.
The traditional avgas piston twin market remains slow, contrasting with the demand for diesel twins. The industry also anticipates benefits from the increasing availability of unleaded avgas and monitors the nascent electric airplane market.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Along with market developments for piston-engine airplanes, we are also closely watching the slowly increasing availability of unleaded avgas. The benefits should affect aircraft owners in terms of lowered maintenance costs as the harmful effects of lead on engines go away.

Sales of the Cirrus Aircraft SR series increased to 419 through the third quarter of 2024 over 389 in the same period of 2023. Cirrus is riding a wave of success. It introduced the latest version of the SR series (G7) early in 2024, and it proved popular. The upgrade included touchscreen interfaces, larger, high-resolution displays, advanced safety systems, improved visibility, more legroom, and the Cirrus IQ mobile app that provides remote access to real-time health and readiness information about the aircraft.