Sport Pilot Talk

Like the Beech with the Starship, it seems like the wise business choice would be to buy back any existing planes in customer's hands and scrap them.

They have a liability and support problem with virtually no upside I can see.

Maybe turn that scrap into a Citation or two and recover their entire investment in this fiasco.

But what do I know.

I doubt that a main concern of Cessna, as reported in the link, was that 195 Skycatcher owners would be 'frustrated' by a future lack of parts. And in fact the FARs allow for approved parts no longer available to be manufactured thru an alternate method. My bet: it's simply a financial bookkeeping decision. Right now those unsold Skycatchers are held as assets on the books. Rather than taking a loss by selling them at a reduced price, Cessna over time can make more money per aircraft by parting them one part at a time, and meanwhile take no loss on the books in the interim. That's the upside, such as it is.

Unlike Eddie, I see no significant liability issue for which they aren't already covered.

Buy back the units already sold? These guys are from GE. That would be viewed as throwing good money after bad.

This has been my experience with Cessna and the airplane lately.

A couple of weeks ago Cessna said they would sell a brand new (from inventory) C-162 and sell for $120k plus cost of options. A day later the Cessna sales guy said his factory rep had just been told to forget that, and that Cessna were not going to sell any more, period.

I checked with another Cessna dealership which suddenly decided to sell their two Skycatchers…"For Sale-Immediately".

I made a few inquiries…result being they would sell them and do a 'deal' on parts/labor for the options I would add. Interestingly their airplanes have the heavier metal props. The composites, which most other C-162s have, save 13lbs per airplane, not an insignificant amount on an LSA, especially the heavier C-162. These two airplanes have empty weights in the 870 area.
What was also interesting was that the dealer secured the last two McCauley IL100 composite props in their inventory. These composite props were made specifically for the C162. It may have taken me talking to their maintenance department and sales for them to realise their planes had the old heavier metal props and they promptly jumped on them.
Still, an interesting disconnect in my view.

My personal concern with Cessna concerning support is first a 'cultural' thing. Cessna has basically washed their hands of the model. We heard from the CEO, 'it has no future''. But, Cessna always said they would 'support it'. Now I would seriously doubt that their hearts would be in that, as indicated by the future limited parts inventory, underlined by the fact that the dealership I spoke with looks like they want to get rid of their planes immediately. To me this is ominous.

It seems Cessna single engine is run by non-pilots, accountants and bean counters. That can't be good.

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MovingOn wrote:Those two SkyCatchers are owned by the FBO. At the price they are asking, they might be there for a while. I certainly hope so.

From the e-mails I got they are starting to sound a bit desperate to sell , in my view.

FastEddieB wrote:Like the Beech with the Starship, it seems like the wise business choice would be to buy back any existing planes in customer's hands and scrap them.

They have a liability and support problem with virtually no upside I can see.

Maybe turn that scrap into a Citation or two and recover their entire investment in this fiasco.

But what do I know.

"Cessna delivered 53 new Citation jets during the quarter, compared to 67 a year ago, a decrease of 21 percent.

With uncertainties from the presidential election and worries about the fiscal cliff, Cessna saw “unusually slow business jet demand” in the last three months of 2012, Scott Donnelly, chairman and CEO of Textron, Cessna’s parent company, told analysts on a conference call Wednesday."


Maybe even the Citation's future isn't good either?

Good recent Dan Johnson interview concerning SkyCatcher and LSA in General

Found out this week that my flight school not only took their two C-162s off the market, but they purchased another one! It was plane #4 in the Cessna Discover Flying Challenge. Should be here sometime next week. Can't wait to fly it!

Flocker wrote:Found out this week that my flight school not only took their two C-162s off the market, but they purchased another one! It was plane #4 in the Cessna Discover Flying Challenge. Should be here sometime next week. Can't wait to fly it!

Here's a pic:

.......

Pictures of Textron crushing unsold Skycatchers:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php? ... 7551354279

Apparently not bothering to take engines out of them even.

If those pics are real it's a damn shame. I might not like the model, but I'd consider buying one at $50,000 price point. Maybe not cost, but at least they would get a little money back on one. I read somewhere the unsold airframes were going to be kept as spares for parts, guess that changed..

I scrolled upthread and saw that I posted this:

"Like the Beech with the Starship, it seems like the wise business choice would be to buy back any existing planes in customer's hands and scrap them."

Prescient perhaps, if not a perfect prediction, but still a damn shame.

By all accounts, a nice enough little plane, with enough satisfied owners/renters that destroying planes that could have served at least for replacement parts seems wrong. But probably made business sense, given the logistics, paperwork and liability concerns involved.

Sad chapter in Light Sport history, but it seems like neither Piper nor Cirrus could make the numbers work either.

So it goes...

........(speechless with despair)
It would be nice to get a truthful explanation for such a debacle. Having sold at auction, if only for parts, would have made so much more sense. It sort of reminds of the fall of Saigon, when perfectly functional aircraft and riverboats were scuttled at sea. Was there a sinister force surrounding the Cessna factory that called for such desperate action? Or did they just need the space to store a business jet?

"Wish I had a loftier purpose, Jack, but it's just about the money." (Dennis Hopper, "Speed"). Just another blow to general Aviation in America. Taps, anyone?

If I were a 162 owner, I'd be pretty pissed about this.