Flight of the Meridian

I had the opportunity to ride along with my friend Brian on a training flight in his new Piper Meridian today.

Brian has a few less than 500 hours and decided that jumping from Cirrus to single pilot jet was bit too big of a leap for him at this point, so he's going to build some turbine time in the Meridian first and then move up to a jet.

We met at Gillespie Field near San Diego. Brian's instructor in the Meridian, Bill, is a very experienced in Meridians and is also an A&P mechanic. He had lots of great experiences to share.

The flight plan took was to take us to the mountainous Big Bear, California, but as we approached the ridge, the winds aloft on the G1000 PFD read about 65 knots at 12,000 feet, so Brian wisely chose to divert from Big Bear to another excellent training airport in Thermal, California, near Palm Springs. As we began the turn away from the mountains, we pretty much got pummeled by moderate to severe turbulence. Had we gone any farther, it would have not been fun.

I found the Meridian to be quite a nice little turboprop. Although I didn't get a chance to fly it, it appeared that the airplane's operation is quite simple and that it's easy to fly.

We have quite a number of jetAVIVA clients who have transitioned from single-engine turboprops like the Meridian to single-pilot jets, and many more asking us about trading-in their single-engine turboprops for single-pilot jets all the time. I plan to get checked out in the Meridian pretty soon so that I can be of better service to these clients.