Piper Lance (1976-1978)

The PA-32R-300 Lance is a Cherokee Six 300 with the gear pulled up. The certificate says as much:

Same as Model PA-32-300 except for redesigned wing and engine mount to accommodate retractable landing gear, gross weight increase, increased capability fuel system and other minor changes.

Three real changes come with the gear: gross weight up from 3,400 to 3,600 lb, usable fuel up from an unstated figure on 84 gallons total to a stated 94 usable of 98, and about 10 to 12 knots of cruise. It keeps the Hershey-bar wing, the wide six/seven-place cabin, the 200 lb baggage limit and the same 300 hp Lycoming IO-540.

Against a Beechcraft A36 it is slower and cheaper and carries considerably more. Against its own fixed-gear sibling it is faster and costs more to insure and maintain — the usual retractable trade, plus a gear system that is genuinely worth budgeting for.

Every row is from TCDS A3SO. The frontmatter describes the PA-32R-300.

All three carry 3,600 lb maximum weight, 98 gallons with 94 usable, 200 lb of baggage and seven seats (six with the optional club installation under NOTE 11).

The Turbo Lance II has no catalogue page of its own. It is a real FAA model on this certificate and the only PA-32 with a published maximum-continuous derate, so its cost model and its high-altitude case are genuinely different from anything currently in the catalogue. That is a gap, recorded rather than filled.

The engine split on the Lance itself

The certificate names two engines and splits them by serial:

Engine Lycoming IO-540-K1A5D Lycoming IO-540-K1G5D for S/N 32R-7680141 through 32R-7880068 (See NOTE 13)

The IO-540-K1A5D covers S/N 32R-7680001 through 32R-7680140 — 140 airframes, a single within-year sequence, so that count is exact. The K1G5D covers everything from 32R-7680141 to the end of production across 1976, 1977 and 1978. engine_model stores the K1G5D as the block nearly the whole fleet carries. Both are 540 cubic-inch injected Lycomings at 300 hp with the same overhaul figure, so nothing else on the page turns on it — but if you are looking at a very early 1976 airframe, check the data plate.

Read this section as an indication, not as book numbers. Nothing in it is sourced.

The frontmatter's 155 KTAS, 15.5 GPH, 1,000 fpm and 900 nm are generation-pass figures. The power setting they describe is not recorded, so cruise_percent_bhp and cruise_altitude_ft are left blank rather than assumed.

The certificated limits are sourced:

Take the bracketed knots. The old page's 195/156 matched neither column of this section.

The limits are calibrated. A3SO grants its equivalent safety finding for CAR 3.757 — the airspeed-marking rule that lets indicated stand in for calibrated — to the Lance II, the Turbo Lance II and the Saratogas, but not to the PA-32R-300. It is the only retractable on the certificate without one. So these figures are stored as published rather than converted, because converting them would be a guess.

Note the gear speeds, which are the numbers that actually shape how you fly it: 130 knots to put the gear down, 109 to bring it up. The retraction limit is the same as flaps-extended and the same as Va, which makes for a tidy set of numbers to remember and a narrow window on a hot departure.

Built on the frontmatter's 1,980 lb empty weight and 1,620 lb useful load, both unsourced generation-pass figures — weigh the actual airplane. Fuel is figured at 6.0 lb/gal, the density the certificate's own NOTE 1 arithmetic implies (98 − 94 = 4 gal against 24.0 lb).

The gear costs about 200 lb of payload against the fixed-gear Cherokee Six and buys back 10 to 12 knots. Over a 500 nm leg that is roughly 20 minutes. It is a real trade and it goes different ways for different buyers.

The binding constraint on a loaded Lance is usually the aft CG limit, not the weight. The certificate's envelope narrows sharply above 2,900 lb — from +80.0 to +95.0 inches at 2,900 lb down to +91.4 to +95.0 at 3,600 lb — so a full rear cabin with the tanks low is the loading to watch.

• Flight Training (2/10): Wrong airplane for primary instruction, but a legitimate complex and high-performance trainer if one is already in the family.
• Backcountry (1/10): Retractable gear on unimproved surfaces, low wing, limited clearance. No.
• Business Travel (9/10): Six seats, 150-plus knots, long legs, a big cabin and an easy IFR platform. This is what the Lance is for.
• Aerobatics (1/10): Normal category. NOTE 2's placard: "NO ACROBATIC MANEUVERS, INCLUDING SPINS, APPROVED."
• Cross-Country (9/10): 94 usable gallons and 3,600 lb of gross weight makes genuinely long legs with people aboard.
• Cargo Hauling (9/10): Large useful load and the Cherokee Six cabin, though the retractable gear costs about 200 lb of empty weight against the fixed-gear airplane.
• Local Fun (5/10): Pleasant to fly, expensive to fly often.
• Surveying (5/10): Carries a payload; the low wing blocks the view down.

The Lance's price band is narrow enough that a large panel investment rarely returns in resale. Buy the panel you want.

See Avionics Pricing Reference.

Parts (good). The IO-540 is superbly supported. Lance-specific gear components are a narrower market than the airframe generally, which is why this page reads "good" rather than "excellent".

Mechanics (common). Any general aviation A&P can work a PA-32; the gear system rewards a shop that has seen one before.

Annual cost:

• Routine annual: $3,000-$4,500 (the gear swing and inspection adds to a Cherokee Six annual)
• Annual with typical squawks: $5,000-$9,000
• Engine reserve: $26/hour ($52,000 ÷ 2,000 TBO)
• Propeller reserve: about $3/hour
• All-in at 100 hours a year: $17,000-$24,000

Expensive items: IO-540 overhaul $52,000 at national specialty pricing · wing spar work, five figures per wing · gear actuator and hydraulic overhaul · exhaust system $3,000-$5,000 · fuel bladders $2,000-$4,000 per tank · constant-speed propeller overhaul $3,000-$5,000.

Overhaul pricing is the house figure from reference/engine-overhaul-pricing.md.

The price block is not sourced. It is inherited from the generation pass and asking prices are perishable.

Value adds: modern panel +$25,000-$50,000 · fresh engine +$20,000-$30,000 · recent gear overhaul +$5,000-$10,000 · documented spar inspection.

Value detractors: high spar time -20-40% · run-out engine -$20,000-$30,000 · deferred gear maintenance · T-tail (against a conventional-tail airplane of the same year) · corrosion history -15-25%.

Airworthiness directives. The PA-28/PA-32 main wing spar directive (AD 2020-26-16, as recorded elsewhere in this catalogue — confirm the applicable list for a specific serial against the FAA's own AD database rather than relying on this page) brought in a factored-service-hours calculation, an eddy-current inspection of the lower spar cap bolt holes at the threshold, and a life limit on unmodified spars. Spar status is now a primary valuation input.

Common problems:

• Wing spar condition. The biggest pre-buy item on any Cherokee-family airframe. Get the factored hours computed and the inspection status in writing.
• Retractable gear system. Gear motor, hydraulic pump, actuators, doors and micro-switches. Budget for it and have it swung and inspected at pre-buy. This is the cost the fixed-gear Cherokee Six does not have.
• Aft CG. With seven seats in a fuselage this long, the loading envelope is the real limit rather than the weight. Verify the weight and balance report is current and that the club-seat installation (NOTE 11 moves the rear seats aft) is reflected in it.
• IO-540 cylinders. Borescope all six.
• Exhaust system cracks. $3,000-$5,000 every 800-1,200 hours.
• Fuel bladder leaks. $2,000-$4,000 per tank.
• Seat rail pin engagement. Recurring Cherokee-family item.

• Hull: retractable gear roughly doubles to triples the rate against a fixed-gear single — Trent's own binders put a fixed-gear Grumman at 0.91% of hull and a retractable Mooney at 1.67% for a 500-hour instrument-rated pilot and 3.33% at 250 hours. See reference/insurance-costs.md.
• Liability ($1M smooth): $900-$1,400/year.
• Pilot requirements: typically 500+ hours total with retractable time, a complex endorsement and a high-performance endorsement. Low-time buyers should expect a dual-instruction requirement written into the policy.
• The single biggest lever is pilot hours, not the airplane.

See GA Insurance Underwriting.