Like just about everybody else, I first saw the Mooney Acclaim on the opening day at this year’s Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In, when Mooney unveiled it before a standing-room only crowd of aviation journalists and interested show-goers. The particular airplane that Mooney unveiled, N312TN, cut a striking figure on thegreen grass that sunny Florida morning, the airplane decked out dramatically in red and black with the image of an eagle, its wing extended in flight, cleverly worked into the scheme.
But it wasn’t until Mooney CEO Gretchen Jahn, who’d just flown in nonstop from Texas, started talking numbers that people sat up and took notice. And the figure that got everyone’s attention was for the high cruise speed-236 knots-which Jahn claimed to have achieved on the nonstop flight into Lakeland.
