Colin Summers

DA40 Owner, Santa Monica, CA

"I am an architect in the Los Angeles basin, and have several projects in the Las Vegas area. The Southwest cattle car from LAX to LAS became a real hassle, with security lines lasting an hour or more after 9/11. I had to find an alternate way to travel - and decided that flying myself was the way to go.

My DA40 gets me to my Las Vegas building projects from my Santa Monica architecture studio much faster than the airlines: while the flight time is about 2 hours, vs. 45 minutes via Southwest's 737s, the door-to-door time is much shorter, since I take off from an airport close to home, and land at a General Aviation airport closer to my projects.

For me, one of the key benefits of flying is to get a different perspective. The DA40's fantastic visibility is one of its major selling points. As an architect, I am very visual - and in the DA40 I have great visibility all around. Seeing the Rockies, the endless fields of Kansas, the huge thunderstorms in Missouri, and the New York skyline through the DA40's bubble canopy made a recent trip I took across the United States in my plane particularly memorable.

Last summer, I flew my DA40 from Los Angeles to the East Coast, and back again. It was a great way to make many different stops, to see places, and visit friends and family. I took my brother with me for the long cross-country, then had my wife and our two sons join me in Boston. The DA40 is so capable - especially with the G1000 cockpit - that I felt totally comfortable flying into a lot of unfamiliar airports, including landing at Boston's Logan airport. It was a an amazing experience to be vectored in with the airliners, and even being number twelve for takeoff in the Congo line with eleven huge passenger jets was a thrill.

On long cross-country trips, the cockpit capability makes all the difference. I was flying from Albuquerque to Topeka, KS - and had to circumnavigate thunderstorms all along the way. With the XM weather, I could see that a cell as 20 nm away, and moving away from me, so I could pick a direction to fly around it. Plus, I could zoom out and pan, and see, with the range rings, which airports were possible stops after a two or three hour leg. The situational awareness is just so comforting - I don't think I would feel comfortable doing these longer trips in unfamiliar areas without the DA40's capabilities.

With my DA40's capable cockpit, flight planning has become much faster. When I first bough my plane (I had 80 hours then), I would flight plan each trip in detail, with many waypoints. Now, with the G1000, I know that I can do a lot more quality decision making and planning in the air, compared to spending hours on the ground planning the flight.

As a designer, I knew I wanted a modern, composite aircraft - there were too many things just wrong from a design perspective with the old-style aluminum aircraft I trained in. I understand new materials - and composites make much more sense to me than aluminum. An early instructor said I had to "look at every rivet" on the thirty year old airplane we were going to fly in. Frankly, I don't think I am competent to assess metal fatigue on an older aircraft.

I sat in a lot of planes before making my decision. My DA40 feels a lot like a European sports car. You know how when you sit in a Porsche, when you touch a part, it's over designed, like someone really paid attention to all the details, down to the font used on the speedometer. I feel my Diamond is like that: someone really put a lot of thought in it, and started with a new idea, where each piece feels well considered and thought out.

A key factor in my decision for the DA40 was low-speed handling. I am very safety conscious, subscribe to the NTSB Reporter, and I understand that the thing that kills lower-time pilots most frequently is a stall-spin accident in the traffic pattern. You have so much to do, it's easy to get distracted, and before you know it, a wing drops and you are on the ground. The DA40 flies so well at slow speeds - mine stalls at 47 kts - that I feel there's always a good margin of safety. That was very important to me, as I bought the plane when I had only 80 hours and I have a young family.

I totally wholeheartedly recommend the DA40 as the best first choice for all new pilots. I suggest it all the time to people who send email or bump into me at airports. When you get started, you need a plane you can safely train in, and your typical missions are a few hundred miles. The DA40 is definitely the best plane for a pilot's first 500 hours.

The insurance rates I got quoted on the DA40 were much lower than on competitors' products. Diamond's safety record is really good, and the insurance companies appear to recognize that in their rates.

The DA40's outstanding fuel burn was a key factor in my decision, and still is. When I fly back and forth between Santa Monica and Las Vegas, I often see 8 gph at 130 kts. That's difficult to touch with anything else - the DA40 is really a very efficient machine.

Whenever someone not used to personal aviation sees my DA40, they are very surprised by its shape. They really think it looks like a plane of the future - and of course, the glass cockpit reinforces that.

The easy access to the back is important for our family. We have two boys, ages 9 and 11, who travel with us in the plane a lot. With the separate rear door, it's really easy to load and unload them - much easier than in some other planes I looked at, where I would need to fold the front seats forward; that can be a hassle with kneeboards, headsets and luggage to deal with."