The Continental was wisely chosen for reliability.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/uoc–agi031008.php

Shipping production to a country that has a proven track record for disregard towards the environment will only lead to increased efforts to rid the US of any emissions to counter China’s massive contribution to global warming. LEt’s face it, cars aren’t going anywhere so the easy target is those “toys” people call airplanes. To put it in simple terms; it’s just a matter of time before the EPA (especially California’s government) takes action against GA aircraft because no other efforts are effectively decreasing global CO2. In essence, Cessna could be harming GA much more than they are helping.

Dee Davis

Your point is fascinating. I certainly agree on the attractiveness of having a product to sell without having to invest capital in infrastructure - especially for a company that has such a large backlog of jet orders to deal with.

I don’t know where you are getting your numbers from though. They’ve claimed a 700/yr capacity, so $670m seems like a reasonable revenue forecast, but wouldn’t $350m be a 52% profit margin? Isn’t that slightly on the laughably ridiculous side of realistic? That sounds like printing money to me. I was taught that 14% was typical for manufacturing, and a huge stretch for aerospace.

Also, nobody seems to be able to acknowledge this, but SAC has been building Airbus & Boeing parts and assemblies for years, so they also have built a proven product for years, built with precision and experience.

Making money is their job. Luckily for us, they also make airplanes while they try to keep the shareholders happy.

Didn’t that concept of capitalism really get its start here in the states a few centuries ago? So why are you surprsied that some companies have gotten very good at it?

Re: Cessna 162

Let’s look at what Jack Pelton the president and CEO of Cessna has to say about the project.

Jack Pelton Says and I am quoting

“SAC will be responsible for the fabrication and assembly of the SkyCatcher. Cessna will be responsible for all customer-facing elements including sales, distribution, customer service and warranty administration.”

“we have specifically engineered it for the flight training environment.”

“It is essential to maintaining competitiveness and extending the Cessna brand to emerging markets.”

Now lets examine the facts, after all, they didn’t’ decide to buy the plane in China just so they could go visit the Pandas!

1. Cessna will develop the complete plane and sales mission with a budget of two million dollars.
2. Cessna will have ZERO invested in the project after that, they have no position on brick or mortar, their agreement is to purchase finished airplanes from SAC.
3. Estimated 10 year sales revenue are in excess of 670 million dollars
4. Estimated pre tax profit 10 years are to excess 350 million dollars

I am sorry; I can’t even compute the return on the $670,000,000 is on a 2,000,000 investment.

Cessna’s plan has little to do with the GA flight training industry in the U.S. There are an abundance of good used planes priced from $13,000 for a serviceable 150, to perhaps $45,000 for a nice example of a 172. Cessna 152s’ can be rented from as little as $65 per hour wet in some areas. Where the 162 is intended to fly, there are no used airplanes, China only has a few hundred civil aircraft in a country of 1.3 Billion residents, and India has 1.1 Billion people. It is now easy to see why Cessna is not overly concerned with American 162 sales, although we may guess the public relations team for the 182s and 172s are not sleeping well lately.

Cessna has developed a business plan that will be studied at the Wharton School for the next 15 years! They have the greatest name in private aviation, took it global, with no money down will make a fortune, and not rob sales from any of their current models!

Don’t be naïve about the production of LSAs from Europe, they have been a proven product for years, and are built with precision and experience, if Cessna chose to have the Czechs build the plane, we wouldn’t be responding to your article today.

By the way, the 172 is the most common trainer used in the USA today, one of the reasons? I weigh 195, my instructor is 185, fuel 120, headphones and flight bag 10. do the math. Chinese are smaller than
Americans.

Finally, Cessna could have avoided the question of Chinese origin if it was priced like a product of Chinese origin; every thing from China is significantly less expensive. If the 162 had an $89,000 base price, everybody would have swallowed hard and looked the other way.

Sincerely

Greg Gordon
Naperville, IL

I own an Evektor sportstar which is typical of the current class of LSAs. It is powered by a rotax 912s and weighs 700 lbs. These aircraft all have useful loads of about 560-620 lbs. Performance does not seem much different. So, how is cessna going to market such a heavy plane? How can you do flight training with such a small useful load?

Dave
dave@igolsa.com

The Chinese are not stupid people. Their luxury goods will be high quality, while there will be a small amount of junk (relative to the total amount of all exported goods) built and exported.

Cessna will NOT accept an inferior product as long as their name is on it. From a quality standpoint, this entire discussion seems a bit irrelevant.

At the 2007 Skycatcher dealer rollout at Oshkosh last year, Jack Pelton (CEO of Cessna) announced that serial number 1 would go to his wife.

My comment to Cessna was: I bet this one is not built in China.

Considering the nock-offs, pirating and fakes coming from China these days and it won’t be long till the new and replacement parts for all products with begin failing at an alarming rate.

Even if the airplane is assembled in Wichita, the parts may well come from China. This Xenophobic, and highly IGNORANT view that sourcing in China is a problem just havent studied the problem or they have another agenda.

This is a GOOD move by Cessna and one I will likely blog about at my freightdawg.com blog.

Eric