That worked for Lancair /sarc

A couple of refinements should be added to these comments.

Firstly, Glasair was not purchased by the Chinese earlier this year. In fact that sale took place several years ago when Tom Waltham sold Glasair to Mr. Fang Tieji, Chairman of Jilin Hanxing Group, in 2012. For the past several years Mr. Fang's daughter, Ran Fang, has been living in the USA and running the company. During that time she married the son of Rob Hickman, founder of Advanced Flight Systems (experimental avionics manufacturer) and bore a child.

With respect to manufacturing problems, Glasair is producing exactly nothing right now. Recently the primary person answering the phone for parts orders was laid off (such a shame as Danielle is an absolutely rock-solid person who always goes the extra mile to provide superior customer service). The production equipment has been shipped to China. When production might resume is anybody's guess, as will be the availability of any parts, let alone complete kits, for the North American market.

Once production is re-started, if it is re-started, I would expect massive problems with initial production. There is a tremendous amount of product-specific knowledge that simply cannot be packed in a shipping container and sent overseas.

The good news is the robustness and durability of the Sportsman airframe means very few parts are needed to keep them flying. Of course if one bends an airplane repairs will become more difficult if major structural parts are unavailable. I made a "last chance" buy of parts prior to the shipment of operations to China - that was my first parts purchase in six years of flying our Sportsman.

Interestingly there is already a cottage industry springing up around the Sportsman and predecessor Glastar aircraft. The owner community is extremely fortunate to have one of the orginal Glasair company founders available for consultation. He is such an incredible wealth of information and he shares his knowledge in the most gentlemanly fashion.

My perspective on Glasair is a "wait and see" perspective. I'm not holding out hope for the Sportsman to ever return to North America in anything other than the occasional "kit in a container" capacity.

In the early nineties, Neico started selling "hardware kits" from the Philippines...various brackets and miscellaneous parts. They were total crap. I sent them back for a refund and made all those parts myself. I have no idea whether fiberglass parts were ever made in the Philippines but, based on my experience with the aluminum parts, I would have been afraid to fly on them. When you leave America, the work ethic is different.

As I understand it, Van sold the company some time back. Which is a sensible thing for a smart Dutchman of his age to do. That he sold it to his employees is emblematic of what a stoic Dutchman would do to ensure the company retains its character into the future for both them and their customers. That he is stepping up and being the face of this problem now, even though he is out of the firing line financially, is what a Gentleman would do, Dutchman or not, and I find this a remarkable sign of integrity and character.

I really hope they find a way to move forward from all this.

In the early nineties, Neico started selling "hardware kits" from the Philippines...various brackets and miscellaneous parts. They were total crap. I sent them back for a refund and made all those parts myself. I have no idea whether fiberglass parts were ever made in the Philippines but, based on my experience with the aluminum parts, I would have been afraid to fly on them. When you leave America, the work ethic is different.

A quality factor for a product is simply not assignable on a nation-by-nation basis.

Glasair outsourced their quick-build aluminum flying surfaced to a sub-contracting company in the Philippines - to which company I have no idea. I've looked inside a lot of Glasair Sportsman quick build flying surfaces and I can say without equivocation that a rivet which is even slightly questionable is an extremely rare sighting in those assemblies. I know, even as a meticulous builder, I would be very hard pressed to produce the same level of quality and consistency that I've seen in the Glasair QB kits produced in the Philippines.

If you’ve been working 40+ hours a week in the GA industry for the last 39+ years, you would likely say that leaving America is not necessary to find that the work ethic is different.

I disagree.

I spent 40 years in the OEM side of aerospace and there is a DEFINITE difference in all aspects of aerospace between the "West" and the rest of the world.

The basic issue is how each culture looks at the value of life. In Western culture, life is all important. Which is why the West has much stronger laws regulating personal behavior, greater protections for marginalized populations (children, the handicapped, etc), and regulation of the environment (air, water, etc), and significantly more safety features built into our products.

Other cultures don't have such a viewpoint to the same extent as the west. It translates into less concern for quality workmanship (especially where bad quality may result in loss of life). When I was working, the majority of our quality problems were from overseas suppliers (primarily in the non-West). Not only did they not seem to care about the products they were mis-producing, when challenged they overwhelmingly obfuscated and changed paperwork so they couldn't be blamed.

I personally had to oversee major quality issues in overseas plants on numerous occasions (and my colleagues also had multiple incidents, so it wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime thing), and it was insanely frustrating to get things back on track. The locals were usually indifferent to the possible ramifications of their actions. Most of these issues were rectified by the FAA stepping in, threatening the OEM, who in turn would threaten the overseas company, who would complain to their government, who would contact the US State Department - you can see where this is going. Eventually, the supplier would agree to some sort of oversight by the OEM, which in the worst cases meant sending whole teams from the US OEM to the supplier and having them camp out for months until everyone thought things were back on track.

It was a colossal waste of resources. Sadly, due to both politics and the perceived lower costs of going overseas (thanks, beancounters), parts continued to be sourced off-shore. I tried on numerous occasions to convince the finance guys that buying from a US source was far better (better quality, lower shipping and transaction costs, less oversight costs on the OEM side, etc), but the finance guys looked only at the part purchase price and ignored all the other costs attached to the hardware.

Art

I don’t own or fly a Vans aircraft, and I sincerely hope that they figure this out, as they are one of the most important parts of the homebuilt/experimental flying world.

But, having spent over 3 years in the Republic of the Philippines in the early 1980s at Clark AB, we used to have a saying. We were young (and dumb) and had a great time living and flying in the PI, and in most parts of SE Asia.

But when you needed something made, built, or repaired, you were constantly reminded that you “lived in the land of the not quite right”.

Do you know that it is illegal to defame someone in the PI? We were told that if someone was robbing your house, and you called the robber a thief, they could sue you for defamation and win. The truth is no defense by Philippine law.

So, did you really save any money offshoring that work?

Butch

Restaurants and airlines

Van's filed for Bankruptcy today - Chapter 11. This should be no surprise. They call it "a key step"

I suspect that a class action suit of pissed off builders was swirling up. There are 28 pages of owner contracts (names and addresses) listed in the filings.

"Van’s will begin contacting customers with open kit orders that were placed prior to the filing date within the next 7 to 10 days with an offer to apply the full amount of their existing deposits toward the purchase of the same kit, under new terms and conditions including a price increase."

Dick VanGrunsven and his wife have offered the company a $6M debtor in possession revolving line of credit to support operations during reorganization.

https://www.vansaircraft.com/2023/12/vans-aircraft-announces-chapter-11-reorganization/#:~:text=On%20December%204%2C%202023%2C%20Van%27s,and%20support%20to%20our%20customers.

As I posted in the other forum, Van's is projecting that they will negative cashflow (think of it as cash losses) about ($300,000) this week. This negative cashflow will accelerate to over ($500,000) per week the remainder of December. Negative cashflow is projected to continue at about ($400,000) per week through the end of February. No real improvement is projected - no material turn around. The only way that they are avoiding laying everyone off and liquidation is through $4 million in loans.

A lot can go wrong with their cash inflow projections - orders, deposits, collections. .

So at the projected deficit rate they will burn through VanGrunsven's "loan" in about four months.

It doesn't sound like there's a direction after that. Are they hoping to "restructure" the balance of the kits and continue to operate as before at a higher price point? What are they going to do with the laser cut parts that are already out the door and assembled? They can scrap bad current inventory but the stuff in the field is a mess.

Well those are not encouraging numbers