Piper Continues Work on Jet

Piper president and CEO Jim Bass said that orders for the single-engine PiperJet have reached 186 and that the company “has made great headway on the PiperJet.” The company probably won’t select the avionics package until later this year, he said, and Piper is considering building a new PiperJet assembly facility elsewhere than the company’s Vero Beach, Fla. headquarters. Also later in the year, Piper will be making a major new product announcement, Bass said, but he declined to divulge further details except to say that it is “something really special. It is a new product for Piper, and it’s going to take the market by storm.”