Peter wrote:
Whether these communities exist is the real Q, I think. Especially after Cirrus, and to a lesser extent Diamond, have fulfilled their niches.
The Icon A5 seems like another possible answer to this. Rather than going for a better version of a Mooney/Beech/Piper/Cessna, as Cirrus and Diamond did, go for something totally different, and market it more as a toy than as a machine for going places. That, combined with a slick marketing strategy seems to have done well. Interestingly though, they’ve also in some ways gone back to the dealer model, as they offer training and so on via the factory. They also appear to be rolling out what amounts to a time-share model in some places.
https://www.iconaircraft.com/a5/own/fleet-access
This obviously doesn’t help people looking to go somewhere, but it’s another model for how to monetize a new market with an aircraft that was designed after the Nixon administration.
I think the Icon is a product with a very narrow market – basically almost calm water.
Vucanair does it.
I hope the Vulcanair does well, but even more I’d like to try an original Partenavia P66… just because, for fun. You still see them flying in Italy.
The ‘1.0’ is a derivation of the P66, which was a 7/8 scale copy of the Cessna 172 sponsored by the Italian Government, for the Italian Aeroclubs of the ‘60s. Having failed to compete with the 172 then, its now trying again 52 years later. Its an interesting angle because Cessna’s volumes are much lower now making a more even playing field and I can’t imagine production labor in Napoli is more expensive than Cessna’s cost. Maybe it will work where others who tried the same concept failed, for example the ‘Quartz Mountain’ neo-Luscombe 11 which was similarly reintroduced 58 years after initial certification.
The video is funny. Even that sales rep (who doesn’t seem to be one of the brightest) is really having a hard time finding something really positive about the aircraft…
LeSving wrote:
Vucanair does it.
Does what?
You have a C172 replacement (with the same IO-360 even!) that is maybe a bit better in performance, but otherwise I don’t see why you don’t just buy a used C172 with a 180hp STC, and maybe a Garmin GNS530W. The MTOW, empty weight, and therefore useful loads are all within 15 pounds of each other.
This is what I was getting at before. Unless you have a step change (30%+) in some respect (speed / range / aesthetics / operating costs / a chute / seating capacity / business model???), you’re competing with the huge supply of cheap used aircraft that are available with similar performance, and massive advantages in cost and maintenance support. This is amplified by the high standard of maintenance that most aircraft are held to, which means that unlike cars most SEPs don’t really wear out and need replacing on a useful timescale, and thus don’t depreciate.
Perhaps in thirty years enough of the Nixon era SEPs will have been neglected or crashed or cannibalized for parts that there is a large market for new aircraft of comparable performance, but otherwise any new plane has to realize that it’s competing with the huge overhang of C172s and PA-28s and so on for most of the civil market. The Vulcan (and new production Pipers/Cessnas) probably have a market for a few government customers, like CAP in the US, the various air forces, and maybe a few super high volume training schools, like Embry Riddle, but otherwise I don’t see what is compelling about a new build versus a C172P with a Penn Yan 180hp STC.
All the Vulcanair does is undercut the cost of a new 172 by a third, presumably taking advantage of low labor cost production and less Textron overhead. That may be all it needs to do, time will tell. I’d assume the ‘industrial’ schools are their target market, training future professional pilots. The existing company has operated for 20+ years and is not a startup, so they probably don’t need a huge volume of sales to break even on this plane. A hundred a year? I think their biggest sales problem is going to be proving they will provide reliable parts supply to high utilization customers who can’t tolerate downtime – predictable cost and low downtime is the reason those customers buy new planes unlike ‘everybody else’.
redRover wrote:
Does what?
Restarting production of an aircraft after a long pause. If they can, others should be able to also.
LeSving wrote:
If they can, others should be able to also
Fair enough!
I also wonder, separate from the new plane question, how much you could build new old planes for using a pre-existing type certificate and so on.
Waco builds a 1930’s spec biplane for about 450kUSD, but that’s low volume and with US labor. However, if you were to go with a production line for C180s, and really invest in the tooling and so on in a place like the Philippines, or Mexico, I wonder if you could get it down to 80k or so if you got the volume up. Given the disparity in parts counts, complexity, and so on, I would hope you could get it down to high end car prices, but this also assumes you have someone who would be willing to front the money to set up that kind of production line.
