Sport Pilot Talk

I don't think this should surprise anyone very much:

http://www.kansas.com/107/story/236262.html

I bet it won't be any country which uses the Euro!

Interesting to read this straight from Cessna's CEO (Jack Pelton).

Before the forum was hacked there were a couple posts here that the 162 would be built in China. Here's an enlightening quote, again from Cessna's Pelton:

"We have so much growth in front of us today in the Citation," Pelton said. "While we wanted the light sport to stimulate new pilot starts and stimulate flight training, with this low cost we aren't going to let it become distractive."

Let's see - the Citation is built in the USA. But the Skycatcher in ...?

Tom

If the dollar keeps sinking against foreign currencies, there won't be any advantage in production abroad. The US-made AMD LS airplane is much cheaper than the imports in spite of using a Continental O-200. Cessna would do better to subcontract the airplane to a domestic producer, although it won't be so easy to find someone to produce 700 per year.

Yes, it's a sad comment on the state of US industry. Didn't Cessna just buy Columbia's small plane business? I guess they wouldn't want actually employ anyone at the Columbia factory. This just sort of makes me sick that the largest small plane manufacturer in the US can't be bothered to actually build the airplanes it sells.

If China ever let's their currency float on the world market, there are going to be a lot of companies that make stuff there now that are going to be in BIG trouble trying to sell these products in the States.

I posted on another thread that I just visited Zenith's plant in Mexico, Mo., AMD's sister company that builds kits rather than LSA's (same plane). It was really great to see people actually building stuff and being happy about it. I'm very glad I chose the Zenith kit instead of one made overseas. Disclaimer - the quick build is build overseas and packaged in Missouri.

interesting thought. oregon wages are fairly low but columbia's are composite.

If I wuz a bettin man I would say Cessna will build the Flycatcher in India . Building the plane in communist China would be to much negative press to overcome IMO .I agree with Oldsportpilot with the exchange rates on the Euro about to go from bad to worse i don't see how they could consider Europe . With these corporations today it's all about cheap ( slave ) labor & India is pretty cheap ,although somewhere south of the border is a possibility to.

Naturally the best choice is to open up a plant here & put Americans to work . If I'm correct it works for Toyata , Honda ,BMW , Mercedes, & Hyundai to name a few .

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A reliable source told me it would probably be Mexico. Apparently a lot of Cessna's parts are already coming from there.

Helen

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Well I wuz wrong !! ??

China are u freakin kidding me?

Clyde Cessna has officially rolled over in his grave !!

Is this a precurser of things to come , like Cessna moving some , part , or all it's single- engine operation to Communist China .

BTW with cheap Chinese labor, no benefits & about zero environmental restrictions 110K is the best competitive price they could set for a copy.

Come on gag with a spoon. I would very much like to know how others on this forum think about this .

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Opinions are like armpits everybody has a couple & they usually stink .

It just plain sad to hear Cessna's CEO so obviously state that Cessna builds its "top of the line" plane (Citation) in the USA, but not its "get people flying" plane (Skycatcher). They don't want the Skycatcher to "detract" from more important (more lucrative?) work.

The whole idea of sending "American" things beyond our borders to cut prices here has been the cause of millions of job losses all across the USA. And it's been going on for many many years.

There will always be quality control issues, regardless of where something is made. But some countries seem to have much better quality control than others. If you have a choice to buy something which says "Made in USA" versus some other country, which do you chose? Is it always just due to price?

Seems there's a lot of folks who just go buy something so they can have fun ... not caring about where it came from.

Just my 2¢.
Tom

I just saw the report on CNBC's Squawk Box. The report said that by Cessna

building the 162 Skycatcher in China they could shave $70,000 off of the

price???

If I had ordered one of these airplanes at Oshkosh there was no mention about it being built out of the USA. I walked around the booth for some time and read the Ads closely

I think it was very misleading by the marketing and Cessna as a whole to do this

I imagine there is 900+ out there thinking the same thing.



I believe that a computer matched hole tooled aluminum airplane designed for real mass production and using blind fasteners could be make cheaply and quickly in the USA with no trouble.

The technology is there to computer cut all the skins and parts. Just need humans to assemble the parts. If all the holes are deburred and drilled by the machine it would be very fast to air blind rivet them together.

You could probably do electrostatic painted precoated skins and just have bare rivets. The aluminum siding industry can do it why can't we.

Instrument panels would be modular with plug in harnesses.

Wheels and brakes, hardware, etc are all off the shelf items.


Aviation needs to look to the automotive industry on how to produce something faster.

The current airplanes take longer to produce and have more parts than a Ferrari.

Anyone know or have experience with a good aviation based design cad program. I'm getting pretty serious about tooling one up. There is a local water jet and CNC machine I can use cheaply. Once the design is in CAD then it can be cut by any vendor.

Even tubing structures can be computer cut. Thats how the Legend cub is done.

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"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away." Antoine de Saint Exupery

CubFlyer, you just described the basic 601XL from AMD in Easton Ga.; CNC'ed parts and blind rivets and 0-200's. Volume isn't large enough to set up a real assembly line. I like the idea of pre-finishing. As I'm sure you know painting it's an expensive operation. Seems like with the new glass cockpit's the plug-and-go instruments would be a no-brainer - it's just that a lot of older pilots that fly LSA's want steam gauges - heavy, expensive and labor intensive to install.

Ron

I think what it said was that the cost to build the aircraft would be $71K higher if it is built in the US. It does not necessarily mean that they will pass the cost savings on to the buyer, but rather that it will improve their margins by sub-contracting it out. The price to the buyer will be what the market will bear.



Tom, you are one of the most vocal people on this board to complain about the cost of LSA's. Would you pay $30K more for a 162 if it were made in the USA?

I don't fault Cessna at all for finding ways to cut costs, and bring a new product to market. How exactly is this costing American's jobs? It's a new product that no one is employed to build now! Yes, it won't create new manufacturing jobs by outsourcing it offshore. If Cessna can't produce it cheap enough to allow them to sell it at what the market will bear, and make a decent enough margin doing so, they won't bother doing it at all. Basic business sense. Yes, they could have told people up front before they took their deposits.

Boy, you guys are really hard on Cessna. I get the feeling that some of you think Cessna is going to produce a pile of crap. Here are some facts.

Cessna's main competition, Cirrus SRS and CT are both made off shore.

Shenyang Aircraft Corp (SAC) makes tail sections for Boeing, Airbus and other parts for Bombardier, plus they make their own design supersonic jet fighters, trainers and SU-27 under licence. You would be mistaken to underestimate the ability of this company to produce quality products. Most of the companies that produce LSA in the US make dozens per year, not hundreds or eventually thousands per year that Cessna will make.

What is that remark about Cessna's selling price of $110,000 being able to be shaved by $70,000 if the product is made in China? That statement does not make any sense.

Cub Flyer's post makes a lot of sense to me but we do not have all the facts and figures that Cessna has at its disposal.

The posts about the value of the US $ and the danger of China calling it's loans is scary but remote. Where would China, Japan, Korea, Mexico etc. etc. etc. be without the US market. I see the fall of the US currency being caused by the trillions being spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully the war will wind down after the next election.

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Gone Flying

rfane: "Tom, you are one of the most vocal people on this board to complain about the cost of LSA's. Would you pay $30K more for a 162 if it were made in the USA?"

I don't recall being unusually vocal about the cost of LSA's, as much as about the need to buy your own LSA if you want to be a sport pilot, and the lack of "sport pilot talk" on the Sport Pilot Talk forum. Seems that most of the LSA talk here is from full PPL, not sport pilots. Nothing wrong with that at all, but where are the sport pilots here?

Yes, if I could afford to buy a new plane, I would pay $30K more for a 162 made in the USA by American workers - if all other things were equal (quality, support, etc.). I'm one of those old guys who is overly sensitive to empty factories and cheap Chinese "stuff". And who still checks for "Made in USA" on the labels of socks.

I agree with your statement about Cessna taking 162 deposits but not revealing that the plane would be built overseas. Bravo.

Tom