While the TwinStar was Diamond’s big draw at last year’s show, the star attraction this year will be the appearance of the D-Jet, the single-engine personal jet that may find work in the air taxi business. Although details haven’t been released, Diamond and Point2Point Airways, a North Dakota-based air taxi company, will be holding a joint news conference with Diamond this week. Diamond is also joining Ballistic Recovery Systems to talk about parachutes for the D-Jet, Powerflo Exhaust (to show off the installation on the new faster DA40XLS) and Utah State University, which is going all-Diamond in its flight school. AirVenture could be a chance to gauge reaction to Diamond’s announcement last week that the D-Jet is going to be a lot more expensive than earlier predicted. The sticker price has ballooned from a projected $850,000 to $1.38 million. Diamond says that’s because customers have been ordering the plane with every possible option, anyway, so it might as well be built that way as the standard model.
