Indeed. RIP to American presence in the major commercial aviation segment. Boeing's leadership only have themselves to blame for their woes. Fuck 'em.

However, I am in full agreement with several trade publications with respect to the light aviation sector. Cessna & Beechcraft, while fully American, have priced themselves out of the market. Cirrus & Piper are foreign owned & controlled companies that are American in name only, whose products are also rediculously overpriced.

Our corner of the segment, the Experimental & Amateur-Built market, went stale years ago with one company, Vans Aircraft, becoming the defacto leader by way of more-than-friendly and beyond sleazy fanboy-tier media coverage...and deceptively low prices.

For years, they bragged about how all their kits were 'Made in America'. Thanks to the company owners presence on the EAA Board of Directors, Vans Aircraft received the lion's share of coverage. A glance at their monthly magazine, Sport Aviation, would lead one to think there were no other choices out there.

Then, less than a year ago, despite near-monopolization of the market, Vans went into bankruptcy. Why? They lost their asses due to replacing a ton of defective kit parts. This was when it was discovered that the majority of their kits (about 85% worth) were produced in the Philippines. So much for their 'Made in Murica' claims, right? At least that explained the low prices...kind of. Also, they are staring down the barrel of a massive class action lawsuit, due to the aluminum metals used. Turns out the main reason behind the low prices was the fact that the metals were sourced from China. As is tradition with cheap Chinese shit, not everything was as it seemed. A spar with "6061-T6" stamped on it was not the case with some aircraft. We discovered this with a client's Vans RV-9A that was showing abnormal signs of fatigue in the spar. That bird, that the client spent 10 years building, is no longer airworthy after just five years and 337 hours of hangar-kept, well-maintained, normal, non-aerobatic use.

Yeah, Vans is done. Numerous other kit manufacturers are going under due to a general lack of demand, because after Vans' flex, what they offer is a copy of something that has already been done. You can only do so many scaled down warbird replicas, so many ultralights, so many Long EZ look-alikes. Literally nothing new; nothing next level. Nothing better.

We are entering the market with what we hope is an answer to these problems.

Stay tuned.