I came across a Bellanca Super Viking, and it struck me: Whatever happened to Bellanca? It seems their assets were sold in 1982, and again in 2002. AviaBellanca has a website that’s been ‘under construction’ since 2004. I guess they’re out of the game.
Cessna quit for eleven years, but they’re making piston-engine singles again.
Piper is still hanging in there.
Beechcraft still makes the Bonanza.
Maule are building.
Mooney have quit making airplanes, but are hopeful they can re-start.
I think SOCATA stopped making piston-engine singles.
Newcomer Cirrus is giving competition to Cessna and Piper.
There are others still making FAA-certified piston-engine singles. Anyone have a list?
The Pilatus is nice, and is a General Aviation aircraft; but as a turboprop it’s beyond the scope of this thread.
Beavers and Otters are out of production, but the rights were sold to a new company in 2006. I think they’re making a turboprop version of the Beaver, and the ‘Twotter’, but no piston-engine singles.
Tiger Aircraft produced the (American Aviation/Grumman American/American General) AA-5B Tiger between 2001 and 2006, but declared bankruptcy in 2007. Their assets were sold to another company, which has not built any aircraft as yet.
Nitpick; The Beavers and Otters were designed and manufactured by de Havilland Canada, not de Havilland (hence the DHC designation rather than DH). Though of course one was the subsidiary of the other, I just think that it’s worth noting that they designed and manufactured aircraft in their own right as well
Correct. Viking Air, out of Victoria BC has the Type Certificates for the DHC-1-through-7 and are manufacturing all new Twin Otters. They are also producing DHC-2 upgrades. Bombardier, obviously, still owns the Type Certificates for the DHC-8 family of aircraft and de Havilland Canada as a company is nothing more than leftover logos on a ton of paperwork at Bombardier!
There are actually a bunch of them if you count the light-sport manufacturers (2 seaters and very small). I will see if I can find a list of those. Aviat makes the all-terrain Husky bush plane.
As long as the type certificate exists, an aircraft design is never irrevocably out of production. Univair could start making complete Ercoupes today if they wanted, for example. There’s even a shop in Michigan (?) making new Waco biplanes, complete with new Jacobs 250HP radials that have been in storage since they were manufactured in WW2. Mooney, already mentioned, has come and gone a number of times over the decades, another example. The industry has always been full enough of dreamers to make those things happen, even if they almost always go broke doing it.
Diamond makes a number of models and are fairly mainstream. They are the planes that I take lessons in one like these Diamond DA20’s. They are a pretty established “newcomber” at that point like Cirrus and have over 15 years of high production (for small planes) under their belt.
