The Big News is Still Coming

Lancair Honcho Bing Lantis wasn't able to say what he wanted to, at the 2002 AOPA EXPO, today. Likening his inability to announce that the long-awaited financing deal was fully done (allowing Lancair to resume aircraft production), Lantis likened his situation to waiting for a child to be born… you know it's coming… but you don't know exactly WHEN.

Apparently; Lancair has a new "controlling partner," a US entity, not publicly traded, with some "aviation background." But like all things in a world that lives and dies on the paper work it generates, there are still "T's to Cross and I's to Dot."

This is what we DO know:

• Lancair had hoped to announce that it had sold a majority of the company today but the paperwork is a laborious issue that still may need a few days, even a week or two to complete.
• The ultimate effect is this (and is right in line with what Lance Neibauer has been telling ANN all along-it helps to have spies in all the right places); Lancair stays in Bend, Oregon.
• The management team changes NOT.
• The current target is for Lancair to resume operations as early as the first weekend in November, but certainly "next month."
• The first meetings with employees caught in the layoffs have been positive and retention rates are quoted as "near 99%."

While some engineering work has been done during the down-spell, little or no flight testing has been done. Still; the current plans are to have the all-electric 350 certified by the first of 2003 and the turbocharged 400 "Legal" some time in April. The order book stands at 180 planes… with few sales losses during the financial drought, and some 20 airplanes sold since the layoffs were announced (these Lancair guys are DEDICATED).

The order book is split evenly between 300 and 400 series airplanes, and initial production is scheduled to hit 10 airplanes a month (which is their break-even rate, by the way) and move to one a day as soon as they get production sorted out.

With 56 airplanes in the field, the birds already flying seem to be holding up well and erstwhile owners are chomping at the bit as the guys with the airplanes keep bragging painfully within their earshot. It seems that current lancair owners are a boastful lot, donchaknow…
More news to follow.

FMI: www.lancair.com