Just for Laughs and Giggles - random aisle seat thoughts..

Ventucky Red

Ventucky Red

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If one were to buy the rights to one of the two-place trainers that are no longer in production and start-up production under a new concern, what hurdles would one encounter from the FAA? And what if one were to get an existing home build design and make it a certified production aircraft.

I get the business side of things; just curious about guberment side.

Also curious as to why Piper, Beechcraft, and Cessna have not booted up the production of their two-place trainers, maybe limited runs with advance orders.

No, I didn't hit the lottery, and for my rich uncle's wealth? He coined the phrase "may the last check you write - bounce." :D
 
Ventucky Red said:
Also curious as to why Piper, Beechcraft, and Cessna have not booted up the production of their two-place trainers, maybe limited runs with advance orders.
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Would there be a market? The 162 was a failure. The 152 can't legally get off the ground with full fuel. The Skipper wasn't a big seller to begin with. The Tomahawk, well, we won't go there.

New trainers aren't exactly flying off the shelves. Can't see many customers waiting to save maybe 10-15% on a two seater with weight and size limitations.
 
Reinvent the Cessna 172 with more reliability at half the price and you've got something ...
 
Valid poitns, all...but the OP said they get the business side of it...
I have wondered the exact same thing a few times.

Just guessing, but I recon the first hurdle is that the design is probably patented, trademarked, etc.... So you'd have to get permission or buy the rights to the design.
The other thing I've considered is that the new design would probably have to go through all the same hoops that a clean sheet design does for certification, so a reverse engineered exact copy of say a 1972 model Cessna 150 would have to comply with all the current regulations and requirements for design, testing, etc.... and I have no idea but I'm guessing lots of things are much more stringent today than back then so it probably wouldn't pass muster.

Still, it does seem like using an old design that used to be very popular and succesfull as a basis, but then doing away with the bad stuff and then fixing some of the shortcomings without going overboard might not be such a bad airplane.

Basically my thought is taht a lot of the new stuff has been "improved" so much that it's not as good as it once was in many ways... the new Skyhawk for example. Sure it has tons of improvements from the old 172's...but how much more affordable would it be if it was more of a copy of say an old M or N model?...
 
Purchasing the rights to an existing design, if your purchase includes the type certificate, you can go ahead and produce them. If the sale includes the production tooling, so much the better. There were many resurrections of Taylorcraft over the years, you can buy brand new production WACO biplanes (if you can afford one), and another outfit is trying hard to get Luscombes back in production. In some cases the type clubs have managed to acquire the TC for orphaned designs.

I don't know what the legal aspect is of all the people producing Cub clones.

Certifying a brand new production aircraft, whether an existing homebuilt design or not, is a much larger undertaking before the FAA will issue a type certificate for it.
 
Bring back the Traumahawk!

I saw one on the ramp a few weeks ago and it brought back quite a mix of memories. Lol
 
There is no guessing required. At a minimum you need to buy/acquire the TCDS. Hopefully you also get as much of the tooling required as you can, although it will be pretty crusty. Then you would need to show the FAA that you can produce examples which conform to that type certificate.

Adding to the above list of Taylorcraft and WACO and the type club for the Luscombe, the Ercoupe type certificate has traded hands several times (was even a Mooney once). The Globe Swift was at one point owned by Roy Lopresti (drop and give me 20 if you don't know who he was) with aspirations of going into production. The type certificate for the Bellanca Viking has been for sale for at least a few years. The type certificate A-759 which is for the Champ, Citabria and Decathlon traded hands in the 1990s and is still being produced by ACA.

Several years ago on one of the many occasions where Mooney fell on their sword the type certificate, tooling and two nearly completed aircraft could was up for sale for under $500k. Whoever snapped that up got the deal of the century. Keep a fist full of cash and be ready for the next opportunity. All you have to do is talk the overlords of Cessna and Beech out of a piece of paper they're not using.

It is MUCH easier to dust off a previously certified design than it is to start over under Part 23 regulations.

Cessna didn't produce the 152 again because they decided it would cost the same as a C172 to produce, and who would rather fly a C152 (besides me)? Who would pay $450k for one? Absolutely not me. I think Cessna could have easily sharpened their pencil and made the plane not only cheaper to produce but light enough to fit a couple of corn fed 'mericans.

Given the number of flight schools that up-sell customers into a 172 over their 152s I don't think the motivation is there. Meanwhile, the same exact 152s I trained in and took my check ride in 1996 are still being pounded on the ground today while their 162s sit idle. Those 152s had over 10k hours on them when I flew them and well over 20k now. What a POS and poor investment those were.
 
I believe Beech destroyed the tooling for all its Musketeer series, including the Sport and the Skipper.
 
An inquiring mind wants to know...
What's keeping the Grumman Yankee, Cheetah, and Tiger from being put back in production?
 
Cessna still makes many of the parts for the older 172s, so they still have the tooling. But those parts are expensive because they don't sell many, and sometimes have to delegate someone to go get the tooling, set it up, get the drawings and the material, and make a few pieces. That right there is an inefficient way to produce parts, but they're not going to make 100 parts that will take 40 years to sell, if ever. So what better idea does anyone have?

The restart Cessnas, '96 and on 172, 182 and 206 had to comply with the rewritten FAR 23 standards. For instance, the front seats had to withstand loadings of 26Gs and the rear seats 19Gs. Those seats are easily three times as heavy as the older ones. They beefed up known weak areas in the airframes, which never results in weight loss. The G1000 nav suite added weight. Some folks think it's lighter than the old steam gauges, but they've never had those components out like us mechanics, and there's a lot of stuff you don't see hidden away ahead of the instrument panel and behind the baggage compartment. It ain't just a couple of video screens. They ended up with much higher empty weights, 300 pounds more in the 172, which meant a larger engine and more fuel for it. People who think they could do better are welcome to try.

Labor rates are a lot higher now than they were when the earlier airplanes were built, even once adjusted for inflation. That, and the few airplanes built, and the fact that they have to be handmade, mostly, makes them expensive. Unless someone comes up with a design that can be assembled by robotics and still be light and strong, it's going to stay that way. Airplanes were never cheap. When I learned to fly, a 172 was about the same price as a three-bedroom house. It still is.

An awful lot of aircraft manufacturing companies have failed. Beware.
 
Ken Whitson said:
An inquiring mind wants to know...
What's keeping the Grumman Yankee, Cheetah, and Tiger from being put back in production?
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Smart owners of the Type Certificates. No profit in it. Check this: https://gama.aero/wp-content/uploads/GAMA_2019_Year-end_Report.pdf

That report is for 2019, before Covid messed everything up. Look at how few GA airplanes were built. Cessna (Textron) looked like this:

upload_2022-4-15_20-47-0.png

126 172s. It's usually the most popular airplane built. Back in the '70s they'd turn out that many 172s in a month, maybe. There were 6825 172Ms built, for instance. 6427 172N models.

Seven Bonanzas. Huh.

Cirrus:

upload_2022-4-15_20-55-47.png

American Champion:

upload_2022-4-15_20-51-45.png

Ten airplanes for the year.

So how many Grummans do you think they'd sell? Never enough, ever, to even cover the startup costs. Just meeting the revised FAR 23 standards might break them.
 
Regarding the Yankee, I forgot to mention that the original American AA-1 Yankee started life as Jim Bede's BD-1 homebuilt, before his BD-5 made him notorious.
 
RyanB said:
What part of it isn’t reliable now?
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Its maintenance. As with all airplanes. If it quits, the owner or the pilot very likely caused it, through some form of mismanagement.
 
Yeah, the Warrior is mostly a two-seater, though I did fly 4 of us to FL. I thought we all agreed the Warrior with the bullet proof O320 was the best choice as a trainer? So forgiving, a monkey could fly it.

Just copy the Warrior.
 
tyndall said:
Would there be a market? The 162 was a failure. The 152 can't legally get off the ground with full fuel. The Skipper wasn't a big seller to begin with. The Tomahawk, well, we won't go there.
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Beechcraft really did promote the Skipper and it came out just as the market was crashing - people that own them, love them. The Tomahawk, have over 300 hours and have owned two of them, what is the issue? As for the 152, did my instrument in one, never had a problem with full fuel.. but then again, neither my instructor or I were supersized. I get the bigger people problem, but that is another topic for another day.

The 162.... an utter failure. they should have just relaunched the 152 and sourced in the parts like the did for the 162. But then again, I am not sitting the c-suite at Textron so what do I know...
 
Ventucky Red said:
The 162.... an utter failure. they should have just relaunched the 152 and sourced in the parts like the did for the 162. But then again, I am not sitting the c-suite at Textron so what do I know...
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It was a sad day when they scrapped the unsold 162s, complete with engines still on them.

upload_2022-4-16_13-25-36.png

They couldn't afford to detail a few people to spend an hour or two per airplane to remove the brand-new O-200-Ds?? Where is the financial justification for that? Even if they sent those engines, free, to A&P schools? 80 of them.

https://www.avweb.com/recent-updates/business-military/skycatcher-destruction/

http://www.jebriggs.com/blog/2016/12/cessna-skycatcher-162-inventory-crushed/comment-page-1/
 
Ventucky Red said:
All good I hope.

The PA38 has become a cult plane... and with the cost to fly these days I can see why.
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Mostly good! After getting my PPL, I was flying warriors and archers. After about a year I rented a PA38 again and actually had a blast in it. Strange, I know...:D
 
Ken Whitson said:
An inquiring mind wants to know...
What's keeping the Grumman Yankee, Cheetah, and Tiger from being put back in production?
Click to expand...

This was tried at Martinsburg (KMRB), I think the 4 place Grumman Yankee was built, not sure of the actual model. They made about 50 of them and went out of business. The hangars and offices are still there and used by the airport authority. It was the second aircraft manufacturer that tried and failed at KMRB, the first was Sino-Swearingen that made a small business jet, also failed.
 
SoonerAviator said:
It has been done, they call it a Tecnam P2010, lol. They just messed up on the "half the price" part.
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It has a Lycoming IO-360 in it. The 172R & S have Lyc IO-360s, too. How then would the P2010 be more reliable?
 
Dan Thomas said:
It has a Lycoming IO-360 in it. The 172R & S have Lyc IO-360s, too. How then would the P2010 be more reliable?
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Mainly just referring to the "reinventing" of the 172 with cleaner aerodynamic surfaces and other modernizations which make it what the 172 should have turned into on the restart models. Not a whole lot of aircraft manufacturers making their own engines, so it's pretty slim-pickings for a "more reliable" engine. Maybe someone will hang a 200HP turboprop off of it and get you increased reliability, but that's not going to fare well in fuel consumption and purchase price.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Mainly just referring to the "reinventing" of the 172 with cleaner aerodynamic surfaces and other modernizations which make it what the 172 should have turned into on the restart models.
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If Cessna had done that, the 172 would be a million-dollar+ airplane. The Cessna Corvalis/ttX/400? whatever they called it was an example of runaway costs. And it was just a fixed-gear, four-place airplane, just with more power and a CS prop. Its cost sank it.

Restarting the 172, with mods to fix the known weak areas and to comply with revised FAR23 rules. was the cheapest way to go. They already had all the tooling and jigs for the entire airplane and didn't need to change too much stuff. Didn't need to clean-sheet the whole thing.
 
Dan Thomas said:
If Cessna had done that, the 172 would be a million-dollar+ airplane. The Cessna Corvalis/ttX/400? whatever they called it was an example of runaway costs. And it was just a fixed-gear, four-place airplane, just with more power and a CS prop. Its cost sank it.

Restarting the 172, with mods to fix the known weak areas and to comply with revised FAR23 rules. was the cheapest way to go. They already had all the tooling and jigs for the entire airplane and didn't need to change too much stuff. Didn't need to clean-sheet the whole thing.
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They already had the C177, which was the evolution of the 172. I would have gone with that instead on the restart.
 
Mooney’s done it a time or two. May not be the same market, but the concept is the same.
 
How about a restart PA28-140 with the Rotax 915 in it.
 
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SoonerAviator said:
They already had the C177, which was the evolution of the 172. I would have gone with that instead on the restart.
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The C177 has its own problems. It started out with 150 HP, which made it an anemic airplane. About 1160 of them built. So they went to 180 HP. Built only 205 of those. The next version had a constant-speed prop, making it not only more expensive, but outside the training airplane requirements. They built less than 1400 of them before closing production in 1978. People just didn't want them, yet they were buying 172s in huge numbers. I figured it was a nice airplane and had a few hours in one of the original 1968 airplanes. Doing a pile of maintenance on one a few years ago, they have their peculiarities, too, and I don't think Cessna was prepared to start producing them again based on the lukewarm reception they got in the '70s.

The wing and spar center section are a lot more complex, and the center section now has corrosion issues. If the one installed can't be saved (I saved one but it was expensive; more than 40 hours labor on that piece alone, and contracted NDI and ultrasonic thickness measuring) you'd need a new one, and I think they're something like $30K. If you can get one.
 
Dan Thomas said:
The restart Cessnas, '96 and on 172, 182 and 206 had to comply with the rewritten FAR 23 standards. For instance, the front seats had to withstand loadings of 26Gs and the rear seats 19Gs. Those seats are easily three times as heavy as the older ones. They beefed up known weak areas in the airframes, which never results in weight loss.
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That's interesting. I always wondered how the new models got so fat. Never made sense that it was just the plush interior driving that much weight gain, but that explains it.
 
Dan Thomas said:
The C177 has its own problems. It started out with 150 HP, which made it an anemic airplane. About 1160 of them built. So they went to 180 HP. Built only 205 of those. The next version had a constant-speed prop, making it not only more expensive, but outside the training airplane requirements. They built less than 1400 of them before closing production in 1978. People just didn't want them, yet they were buying 172s in huge numbers. I figured it was a nice airplane and had a few hours in one of the original 1968 airplanes. Doing a pile of maintenance on one a few years ago, they have their peculiarities, too, and I don't think Cessna was prepared to start producing them again based on the lukewarm reception they got in the '70s.

The wing and spar center section are a lot more complex, and the center section now has corrosion issues. If the one installed can't be saved (I saved one but it was expensive; more than 40 hours labor on that piece alone, and contracted NDI and ultrasonic thickness measuring) you'd need a new one, and I think they're something like $30K. If you can get one.
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I realize that the 177 has it's problems, but what aircraft doesn't? Even the beloved Bo has a host of expensive issues and unobtanium parts depending on the model. The point is that you could take the C172 and refine it . . . which is basically what the C177 did. Swap for a fixed pitch prop and you have a C177 that is an updated C172. The point isn't to revisit history and what sold vs what didn't at the time, it's to take an existing type certificate and refine it to restart production. I can almost guarantee that, if the C177 were reproduced today (and the P2010 didn't exist), that there would be buyers for it. Now, that all depends on the price point. I might even venture to say that if the C177 and C172 were both still produced currently by Cessna at the same price (or close to it), that the C177 would outsell it on looks/speed alone. They are trying to compete with Cirrus and Diamond, which don't look like they were made back in the 1950's like a C172 does.
 
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