The plan was simple. I would be transitioning from an unpressurized, high-performance single to a Piper Meridian. While I have a little experience in turbine airplanes, the idea was for me to make the leap in a week and to get to the point in that short time where I could handle the airplane on my own. Doable? I thought so, but still had some doubts.
Let’s face it. There are some major differences between a Cirrus SR22, the type of airplane I regularly fly, and a Meridian, and all of them have to do directly or indirectly with the fact that the Meridian is a turbine airplane and a pressurized airplane on top of that. It has systems I wasn’t very familiar with, and it operates in a section of the atmosphere that I’m not used to flying in. It really would be a whole new kind of flying.
