Prince Aviation, based in Belgrade, Serbia, is to take delivery of the first Piper Seminole fitted with Garmin G1000 avionics, after the incorporation of the suite into the Seminole was approved by EASA.

Prince plans to add the aircraft to its flight training fleet, and will continue to provide air charter services along with aircraft main-tenance and maintenance training.

Founded in 1990, the company has its main hub at the Belgrade Nikola Tesla airport. It was one of the first, and claims to be the largest, vip charter operators in the Balkans.

Says quality manager Vladimir Jovanovic: “The aircraft spent a long time on its ferry flight after we took delivery at Piper. It was a little bit delayed because of the bad weather. “We selected the aircraft a couple of months ago and we did test flights a couple of weeks back. We did not do any test flights in the selection process because we already knew all the parameters for a Seminole. “It is already the most popular aircraft for flight training, and the Garmin 1000 is just a good addition to us, because we already have experience of the system on the Cessna 172 and Citation Mustang. So that's one of the biggest advantages on the avionics side.”

The latest aircraft is Prince's first Seminole, and it also flies a Piper Seneca. Jovanovic says that further Seminoles will most likely be considered, but that for the time being the current purchase is the only plan this year.

“This is more of an upgrade than an expansion,” he continues. “It will take more flight hours from our Seneca, and then if it goes well we will think about expanding because we have enough interest to expand. But we will be taking those steps with caution.”