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:

The market for modern single-engine piston aircraft is experiencing strong growth, with Cirrus SR series sales significantly increasing due to its popular G7 update and advanced features.
Demand for piston aircraft trainers remains robust, exemplified by consistent high sales of the Cessna 172 and Piper Archer, driven by flight school needs and FAA rule changes.
Diesel-powered twin-engine aircraft, like Diamond's DA42 and DA62, are seeing strong sales and are outperforming traditional avgas piston twins, indicating a clear demand for owner-flown models with specific performance and safety.
The increasing availability of unleaded avgas is expected to reduce maintenance costs, while the electric airplane market is still nascent, with technology yet to mature for broad viability.

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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.