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Sonaca 200 - the end

Going from a Jodel DR1050 to a Bolkow Junior, the big disadvantage is available load, but the huge advantage is keeping warm in winter.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

@Peter, the owners of Sonaca were and are mainly
the Belgian government. The company has 3500 employees and makes large aircraft structural components under subcontract, an example of the usual 21st century conglomeration of pre-existing aircraft related suppliers. Sonaca is not going out of business.

There is nothing ‘special’ about the Sonaca aircraft, it is a very lightly modified built version of the Sling, which has proven to be a commercially viable design, or at least as viable as many of its competitors worldwide. Presumably somebody at Sonaca understood that the company was not going to fund an original in-house design, so they looked around for an existing design for licensed production. The choice was a design that met the needs of the European market as well as e.g. the similar Czech designs but which being South African was not already established in Europe. Apparently that was not enough to make it competitive against Tecnam and other more locally established designs. I would guess (without knowing) that running a startup division within the cost structure of a relatively large company was the issue, not the otherwise successful Sling design. Having said that, @ivark’s comment about issues with cold weather operation makes sense given that the design is South African.

The same scenario has happened before, for example Bölkow (a similar mid-size defense contractor) licensed production of the little Junior from SAAB in the 60s, built them in Germany in lightly modified form, then stopped building light aircraft when the defense business grew and other priorities (in their case building helicopters and weaponry) took over. Almost exactly the same story except Bölkow was more successful with their very light aircraft in the short term.

If you want a Sonaca now, it seems to me you just buy a Sling, the same way you buy a Czech SportCruiser in the US now if you didn’t buy a PiperSport LSA in 2011. The PiperSport was another similar situation, except Piper never licensed production, only sales.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 27 May 16:10
Our local ATO bought 2 last year. Cheaper to operate than C150/152- the schools here are not operating Contis over TBO here and there is about 1/3 of price difference between avgas and mogas, but has a some issues- too cold during winter season, both inside and also for the engine- thermostat was not certified.. But they are flying a lot ,so it seems no fatal flaws so far.
EETU, Estonia

These parallels are not really applicable.

For a product to succeed, it has to offer something special.

Let’s say the C152 was still available and for say $100k, and has an established market.

If somebody brings out a similar plane, $100k, it isn’t going to sell.

This is also true for any other product.

So what was special about the Sonaca? I am asking these questions but nobody is replying, and this isn’t an Apple Nostalgia thread

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Malibuflyer wrote:

Same story – with Lisa as well as the Mac might have been revolutionary (or at least put a great marketing behind the revolutionary concept of the Xerox STAR)

Of course I know about the Xerox STAR. And I have actually worked on a Lisa.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 27 May 10:03
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

A minor point re Diamond: the owner wanted to exit at some point, as dones almost everyone before they die. And who else was going to come up with cash? It’s either that, or you do some leveraged deal with financiers which invariably destroys the company when they do their exit… but neither the original owner nor the financiers are too worried about the actual business.

Robins work in France because much of France has better wx; they are not suitable for the UK unless hangared. And hangarage is much cheaper in France due to airfield subsidies. In the UK, most of the PPL fleet sits outdoors in the rain, and probably same for much of Europe.

Did Sonaca have a lot of tooling? If so, there is value in the business. Otherwise, it is just the parts business, which won’t be worth much. How old were the Sonaca owners?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Between 2005 and 2010s, didn’t several UK flying schools start buying D20 Katanas to replace their fleets of Cessna150/152s
Reports from the clubs at the time said they were more reliable, performed better, less fuel needed and cheaper and less maintenance. Both instructors and students preferred them.
Diamond then brought I the DA40,DA42 and DA62. All AIUI have sold well but did not stop the company being bought by the Chinese, like Cirrus.
In France the wood and fabric Robins and Jodels have been the staple of most schools. Many have been are being renovated because there is nothing better on the market, as affordable. Many look as good today as they did when they were first manufactured and even the price of a new Robin is very competitive when compared to the offerings from Cirrus, Piper and Cessna with the same or.similar performance.
Although Issoire’s Lionceau, Lion and Simba are making some inroads in this market as are Elixir.

France

It was doomed to fail.

Yet another two seat aircraft that was aimed at the training market where the manufacturer forgets that to be successful the aircraft has to be more cost effective to run that the C152.

In the UK one can get 28800 twenty minute trail lessons out of an O-235 before its needs overhaul out the Turbo powered Rotax 914 its 6666.

So which aircraft is the flying school going to operate?

Here are some innovations that were both cheaper and better than what they replaced:

Aluminum monocoque aircraft structure versus wood, nails and glue
Stamped steel monocoque car structure versus separate chassis and coach built body
Making books with a printing press versus feeding a room full of monks to write books by hand
Telegraph versus human courier
Steam engine versus multiple teams of horses
Paper money versus coins

And so on.

The issue in GA aircraft is that our definition of what we want to buy, i.e. a plane we fly ourselves to carry us and others from place to place, is narrow enough that 120 years of innovation has pretty well optimized the basic architecture and solution within that constraint. It actually took about 50 years, and since then progress has been achieved by working all the little details. What amazes me is how much better an RV-7A performs than an Airtourer or Zlin that is basically the same thing done in the 70s. Much faster and double the climb rate with little or no loss of strength or utility. It’s also easier to make given CNC’d skins and other similar things that aren’t obvious to the pilot. However, the RV series of designs was at no point a revolutionary concept.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 26 May 23:42

Airborne_Again wrote:

I was not thinking about phones but about computers.

Same story – with Lisa as well as the Mac might have been revolutionary (or at least put a great marketing behind the revolutionary concept of the Xerox STAR), but of course not cheaper. Introduction price of the Mac in Europe was about 30% higher than that of a PC with similar speed. And the Atari ST which also had a Motorola 68000 and a graphical user interface was half the price only one year later…

Again: very few examples of innovations that have been better and cheaper at the same time.

Germany
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