reinhardj wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:36 am
Last week I had a telephone conversation with some experts at Diamond Austria.
I called their after sales contact, but these guys did not have any information regarding our subject. I was handed over to a person responsible for production and the only outcome was, that there may be upgrade paths with the NXi (phase I and phase II) replacing some or all avionics. There was no answer to the question, if it would be possible just to have the latest legacy G1000 software revision (15) in order to get reasonable progress without spending 10thousends of Euros.
I'm not sure what options we would get in just upgrading G1000 software without upgrading avionics. I don't know, maybe someone thinks that logging flight data (or any other feature that comes with new version of G1000 software) is great feature but I'm more concerned about our avionics becoming obsolete and even hard to replace in case of failure. Maybe old G1000 platform is just not capable (memory, processing power) of running new software. We're facing trivial problems like inability to purchase 4GB SD card for transferring NavData. So our problems with legacy hardware will simply become bigger and bigger as time lapses.
reinhardj wrote:
So I get the even stronger impression, that Diamond still is not interested in satisfied customers but looks for opportunities to milk the crazy pilots who have invested in Diamond planes.
I was really open to see the improvement in their attitude but I'm also getting this impression.
reinhardj wrote:
Later I was told, that their statement was only related to the DA42 although I had explicitly asked for the DA40 and that they do not care for the DA40 in Austria any more. Diamond Austria cannot provide any solution for the DA40. For any DA40 related question I have to contact Diamond Canada....
That would be really sad because this would be additional example of neglecting loyal customers and forgetting that DA40 is entry level aircraft that can trigger later purchase of Diamond high-end models.
reinhardj wrote:
So I see no progress even after 6 months of the petition.
If nothing happens during May, I'll have to agree with you and then the only option we have is to go with interested aviation media and organizations like AOPA.
reinhardj wrote:
Although I love my DA40, I am presently looking for a new bird. In principle the DA50 in on my list, but I will only sign a contract with Diamond again in case they commit themselves to provide all major avionics software releases for the next 15 years.
Well… I would think twice if I'm ready to commit $900k having in mind current support level. What is the warranty that this won't happen in future again?