The Daher Airplane Business Unit has announced 2017 delivery totals for the TBM turboprop aircraft, with 57 TBM 910s and TBM 930s handed over to owners and operators during the year. This total compares with 54 TBM aircraft delivered in 2016.

Nicolas Chabbert, Senior Vice President of the Daher Airplane Business Unit, said sales were split between current TBM owners and new customers.

The figures stand out against a sector-wide backdrop of falling turboprop sales, as recently reported by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA). GAMA figures show an overall 3.3% decline in turboprop shipments in 2017, to 563 aircraft.

TBM deliveries in 2017 were divided between the TBM 910 version (launched in April 2017, equipped with Garmin’s G1000 NXi all-glass avionics suite controlled by a physical keypad), and the TBM 930 (introduced in 2016, featuring Garmin’s G3000 flight deck with touchscreen-controlled glass flight deck).

North America remained the lead market for TBM aircraft, followed by Europe for the second consecutive year, with 10 deliveries in 2017 for France, Germany, the UK and Poland.

Since the TBM came onto the market in 1990, 879 aircraft have been built in all versions, including earlier-production TBM 700s and TBM 850s.

Daher recently announced new features for its 2018 production TBM 910s and TBM 930s, including what it says are the first electrically-heated seats for an aircraft in the single-engine turboprop category.

Other new features on the Model Year 2018 aircraft include an improved pilot interface — backlighting on the cockpit’s central console to provide enhanced visibility at night for the manual trim, power lever, flaps lever and override controls.