It’s axiomatic that four-place airplanes are flown with two or three seats empty for most trips. But it’s just as true that some owners want not just four seats, but a bunch of payload even beyond that. That’s why we have the Cessna 182 and the Piper PA-28-235/236 series. That there aren’t many of the latter suggests that owners hungry for hauling are a fraction of the market, at least for Piper.
Premier Aircraft is betting that the fraction is large enough to constitute a modest business in refurbing the PA-28-236—the Dakota—to new standards and we recently got a look at what the company is doing with this airplane. As new single-engine airplanes reach nearer the million dollar mark, Premier, a well-known Florida sales and modification shop, thinks owners will find value in a refurbed example of an airplane that’s no longer built, but has niche appeal for buyers bored by the everyman humdrumness of a Skylane.