We Fly: Stepping Up in Style With Daher Aircraft TBM 980

Turboprop provides 330-knot performance, intuitive cockpit, and new long-distance travel performance.

Jonathan Welsh

Monday, August 17, 2026 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Daher Aircraft TBM 980 [Credit: Airborne Films]

Key Takeaways:

The author, a pilot of a high-performance piston single, evaluates the Daher TBM 980 as a significant "step-up" aircraft, meeting the needs for greater speed, payload capacity, and efficiency for long-distance family travel.
The TBM 980 offers dramatically superior performance compared to piston aircraft, including twice the cruise speed (330 ktas), impressive climb rates (up to 4,000 fpm), and a 31,000-foot service ceiling, drastically reducing travel times.
It features advanced and intuitive Garmin G3000 Prime avionics with multiple touchscreens, a FADEC-controlled engine for simpler starts, and a cleaner preflight process, streamlining pilot interaction and operations.
The aircraft provides a smooth, powerful, and quiet flying experience from takeoff to rapid descent, presenting itself as an ideal choice for ambitious, owner-flown missions despite a learning curve for piston pilots transitioning to its landing characteristics.

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Long family trips for our sons’ far-flung sporting events, and a drawn-out move across several states to a new home combined over the past year to put me behind the wheel of the car more often than at the controls of an airplane. Still, as always, I spent much of my driving time thinking about flying. Mostly I considered how much sooner we would arrive at our destination if only we were airborne.

Flying from our old home in New Jersey to the new one in Vermont in Annie, our 1992 Commander 114B, takes less than two hours compared with at least five and a half in the car, avoiding all but the most necessary rest stops. From Vermont to Geneva, New York, to visit our younger son at school takes about an hour and 45 minutes versus seven hours driving. Vermont to Deer Isle, Maine, a favorite escape, is a shade over an hour in the airplane compared with a meandering five and a half hours behind the wheel—nearly all on backroads.