Piper president and CEO Simon Caldecott is pleased to be the apparent trainer-maker of choice at a time when demand for pilots is skyrocketing. “The latest Boeing forecast calls for a need for 800,000 pilots in the next 20 years,” he told journalists at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Monday. "We’ve signed contracts for more than 100 of our Pilot 100 series [trainers] in the past two months.”

Training specialist ATP committed to 50 Pilot 100s and 100i models (the latter an IFR variant), with deliveries scheduled to start in 2020. In addition, Purdue University signed for 13 Garmin G1000-equipped Archers. Addressing the issue of meeting production demand, Caldecott said, “The build-to-order model is working well.” He cited the company’s $3.5 million investment in facility upgrades.

He also was clearly enthusiastic about Piper’s foray into additive manufacturing (3D printing), which began at a modest level in 2009, but has since ramped up to a much higher scale. “We’ve started identifying parts that we believe could be manufactured with additive manufacturing and gotten FAA approvals for some.” He held up a printed environmental-system duct from the M600 single-engine turboprop and said it represented a 94 percent cost savings over an aluminum component. “We’re having to re-train our engineers to take full advantage of the prototyping potential,” he said.

Asked about how the turbine singles in Piper’s line are doing, he said the available inventory for M600s among dealers is at a long-time low, indicating a solid market.