Officially, the details of Textron Aviation’s new single-engine turboprop program remain closely held. The company will only tease with broad brush strokes, and all a spokesperson would reveal shortly before NBAA 2015 began was the following:

“We intend to outperform the competition with the introduction of this product–from cabin size and acquisition cost, to performance capability. By leveraging the newest technologies, we expect this aircraft to have a range of more than 1,500 nautical miles and speeds in excess of 280 knots, while offering best in class operating costs. This is an entirely new, clean-sheet design aircraft and not a derivative or variant of any existing product. The company plans to have a single engine turboprop article in 2016.” 

Before Textron acquired Beechcraft last year, Cessna unveiled a concept for a new turboprop single at AirVenture 2012. The “research cabin mockup” was for a design slightly larger than the Piper Meridian. The concept aircraft design proposal included all-composite construction with retractable landing gear, a wingspan of 42 feet, sidestick controls and seating for seven in a cabin measuring 53 inches tall, 54 inches wide and 17 feet, 8 inches long. Baggage compartment space was 26 cubic feet. Target range for that mockup was 1,500 nm and the maximum cruise speed goal 280 knots. Cessna also had begun flying a “research vehicle” that essentially was a Citation Mustang very light jet denuded of its fanjets; instead a turboprop engine had been stuffed in the nose.

About that same time, rumblings began coming out of Beechcraft of a project designated PD434 that allegedly featured the filament-wound composite fuselage of a Premier light jet with a nose-mounted turboprop engine. That design was said to be aimed squarely at the Pilatus PC-12 market.

What likely will be unveiled next year will fit a market niche somewhere in between, sized somewhere between the two market-leading pressurized turbine singles; the 330-knot TBM 900 and the capacious and recently updated Pilatus PC-12 NG. Textron is expected to try to take market share away from both of those popular programs by offering an aircraft that combines attributes of both without biting into sales of its own twin-engine King Air line.

By acquiring Beechcraft and its King Air turboprop twin family, Textron Aviation has emerged as the dominant industry force in the turboprop market with 221 combined deliveries of King Airs and Cessna Caravan singles last year to the civil market. King Airs comprise virtually the entire twin turboprop market, and revenues from King Air new aircraft sales and ongoing support have provided Textron Aviation with a stable source of income in an increasingly volatile jet market.

Properly executed, a new single-engine turboprop could also take some market share away from Piper. That company announced its own all-new turboprop single earlier this year, the M600, featuring touchscreen-controlled Garmin G3000 avionics and an upscale interior with a fly away price of $2.82 million.

The new offering from Textron likely will cost more than that, but less than the $3.8 million a new TBM 900 commands. Expect Textron to go with G3000 or some other permutation of touchscreen avionics and sidesticks, but eschew composite airframe construction in favor of mostly aluminum and metal skin bonding, reducing development risks and keying on manufacturability in line with its current techniques in Wichita and Independence, Kan.

Some sort of fuselage cargo door and combi cabin layout also likely will be in the cards, as this will be a lifestyle aircraft aimed mostly at the owner-pilot market. Textron has surprised with some recent powerplant choices at both Cessna and Bell Helicopter, but there is little reason to think that this new aircraft would sport anything but a Pratt & Whitney Canada product in the nose, perhaps with single-lever power control or Innovative Solution & Support’s just-announced PT6 autothrottle system.