There is more truth to that statement....
CAP purchases alone have propped up Cessna sales for several years....
After all,, it ain't their money...
...
Now.. All you hard working conservatives, get back to earning money so you can write the guvmint a check next quarter...
Really it's not an awful aircraft for their mission, but it is too heavy for three standard males and full fuel.
The real waste of money was the non-turbo GA-8 to carry a specific piece of hardware that was outdated before it even flew.
Bought the airframe around the gear, for someone's wet dream of how useful it would be.
I would also imagine in addition to CAP, there is also a lot of law enforcement, government, and educational institutions that buy new planes. I was told by the Cessna rep that (IIRC) Embry-Riddle is one of their largest customers.
I'm sure with all the planes Sporty's [supposedly] gives away, they're up there too
The schools do buy some. UND helped keep Piper on life support too.
Sporty's only gives away a plane a year though, AFAIK. Not even a drop in the bucket.
The real and slowly worsening crisis is the lack of retracts in trainer sizes for Commercial ticket candidates. Nobody is making them. And they get wrecked with gear up's in the training environment with slow destructive continuous clockwork.
The R-182 I flew many years ago at one of the local clubs had the nose gear collapse at the end of an FAA checkride recently. Wasn't anyone I knew that had flown it that hadn't had a gear problem in it eventually over time.
The photo from the freshly minted CFI (he passed. It collapsed while taxiing in...) was pretty funny. "How I ended my CFI checkride..." with the venerable old bird with her butt in the air and nose on the ground.
Of course we also have a newish private pilot who also passed his checkride when the prop departed his LSA with the DPE on board. All PTS items were complete so the DPE shook his hand and said "congratulations" after he landed it in a field. Heh.
So it can happen to anyone. Nice if it happens after all the PTS requirements are already completed. LOL.
Retracts just get their butts kicked anytime they're on a rental line. The schools beat the crap out of them until they break and then see if they can put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall for some more abuse.
It's one of the things as an older guy thinking about doing the rating "for fun" that really turns me off -- flying a claptrap retract that's had the holy hell kicked out of it for more than three decades.
