Last year, we learned that Black Square was working on the piston-single Commander 114. After dropping that initial news, the developer has been quiet on the Commander front, as is typical with Black Square’s tight-lipped development process. However, today, Black Square’s marketing partner, Just Flight, posted several previews of the upcoming Commander 114 to their Facebook page.
The Rockwell Commander 114 is a complex, high-performance piston four-seat aircraft introduced in 1976 by Rockwell International, which made a name for itself as a highly desirable cross-country cruiser. The Commander’s popularity was helped by its incredibly wide, luxury-car-inspired cabin with excellent visibility and dual entry doors, which, at the time, other aircraft in its class lacked (i.e., the Beechcraft Bonanza, Piper Arrow, and Mooney M20).
From the photos posted by Just Flight, we can tell that Black Square’s Commander 114 will likely feature hot-swappable avionics with support for the Garmin GTN and GNS series, and possibly other “early and pre-GPS” options seen in previous Black Square releases; options that would be right at home for a mid-1970’s production Commander 114. Additionally, based on the view of the Black Square tablet, it appears that a turbocharged option will be available, possibly indicating that we will get the normally aspirated model and/or the turbocharged Commander 114TC.
Of course, this isn’t the only Commander Black Square is working on, with progress presumably also continuing on the twin, Aero Commander, in both the piston-powered and turbine-powered versions that we first saw previewed during last year’s FlightSimExpo.
As always, you can rely on FSElite to keep you updated as more details about Black Square’s latest products become available.
