Not a bad thing; in fact, investments in GA are investments in their own market potential, not a new line of exports. If there is a boom they will build cool new stuff and send it here. If not, they will dick around with it a while and then try to sell back to somebody over here.

Agreed. t the end of the day, building airplanes is no longer "innovative". It's time for it to go where the labor is cheap and they can pump them out fast.

It's not like the U.S. has been kind to aircraft manufacturers. Look what the Unions have done to HBC. It's ridiculous. They deserve to lose it all to the Chinese.

Maybe this will lead to airplanes priced like cars. Cuz it ain't gonna happen on the path they're on here in the U.S.

Yeah..... you can fly em after they move to China but you'll be strangely unsatisfied in an hour and will want to fly something else.

I guess that's better than a fully fueled plane with Chinese fuel being starved for fuel after one hour.

Hmmm. Maybe. But 99% of my flying enjoyment comes from "going somewhere". I don't go for turns in the pattern.

If they can deliver good planes for a fraction of the cost now, they will save GA. That's really the bottom line.

[quote="Jason Crandall
I always hear middle easterners on the radio. Just saying'.[/quote]

Jason,

You and I need to have a talk....

...Babar.

The biggest problem I forsee is this:

The Chinese company struggles making a profit so they move more and more manufacturing to China, leaving the build-up in the US. This still does not improve the margin substantially so they finally get permission from the FAA to build the whole plane overseas. The margin fails to improve significantly and the parent company drops the product. Cirrus, Continental or Superior, etc. is now dead. Ten years time-easily.

The only thing that will "save" GA is more pilots flying. More pilots flying means more competition for Fuel. More competition means more auxillary services (mx, flight products, etc.) For this to occur, we need a shift in transportation...A better Dayjet, a better air-taxi model, maybe? Get more "commoners" flying charter instead of airlines...Or go the other route...More weekend flyers who can work on their own planes. This dwindles the A&P pool but the individual can afford the gas to fly. Safety will of-course decline, but those living in the floating cities won't care if your Jupiter Jet crashes to the surface....

...Just some of the theories I get when thinking about GA

Seriously, you hear someone on the radio and you can't understand him, it's always a middle easterner.

Sorry if "middle easterner" isn't the P.C. terminology for folks from that part of the world.

I'm pretty sure that HBC is moving piston production to Mexico. I read that in a news article somewhere.

But whatever, this just makes me want a Cirrus even less now. Didn't think that was possible....but sure enough it happened.

China sure is buying up things at quite a clip. They've probably come to the realization that it is easier and more effective to just buy smaller companies in order to get technologies and intellectual property, this in contrast to their previous preferred strategy which was just to steal it via industrial espionage and reverse engineering.

I am prejudiced. I am prejudiced in favor of my homeland...my country...the USA. I was born here. I live here. My future is here, and so is that of my children.

If one really does some research he will find that the very best products were made in the USA from about 1946 to 1980. By 1980 the Japanese were catching up on quality manufacturing, and, at a cheaper price. Manufacturing flowed to Japan and other Asian countries for cheaper labor costs. As Japan and nearby countries prospered, the cost of labor increased greatly. The price of their goods went up, and up. This is normal economics.

In the normal cycles of business there is always someone willing to perform a service/manufacturing at a discount...somewhere. That "somewhere" in the most recent business evolution is China.

So, the Chinese, with billions of people willing to work for "peanuts", began their foray into capitalism and manufacturing. Companies from all over the world took their manufacturing processes to China and laid off their homeland workers, and the workers from the first countries for which manufacturers left the USA, just for a cheaper product, to gain a cost advantage on their competition. Then the competition went there too, and soon all companies had the same manufacturing cost and everything was back where it started...except...Walmart was able to sell a product in 1995 for the same price at which they sold it in 1985. As competition continued to heat up prices kept getting more and more competitive, due to cheap labor, and Walmart was still able to sell the same product for the same price in 2005.

As all the companies gave away their technology to the Chinese, and China's manufacturing industries grew by 100 fold + every few years, the Chinese became very affluent, and today "own" the world of manufacturing, and hold a significant portion of most capitalistic countries' debt.

It is a sad situation for most of the world (except the Chinese).

Consider all the things that were invented in the USA, and for which the rest of the world has benefited, and for which they should be grateful (a short list that could be really long):

Cloth manufacturing processes
Automobiles, and the assembly lines
Airplanes
Typewriter
Electricity generation
Harnessing atomic energy
Light bulb
Telephone
Cell phone
Crude oil production and refining
Computers, including codes and chips
Internet

Look at the list above. Almost all of the products listed that are available for sale in the USA are not manufactured here anymore. We invented it, then we sent the technology somewhere else for cheaper manufacturing cost. The reason? You probably don't want to read my opinion, and may disagree, but labor unions eventually committed "suicide"...they killed themselves.

For too long we have had almost no tariffs levied against foreign made products.

I want my clothes, shoes and everything else to say "Made in the USA", but sadly it's almost impossible. I think it is time we increased the levies and put Americans back to work. I'm willing to pay more for goods produced in American factories, but I won't be looking for a "Union Made" label.

Just today we observe...

Hawker Beechcraft Opens Second Mexican Plant

Manufacturing.Net - February 28, 2011

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- Hawker Beechcraft Corp. has opened a second plant in Mexico and expects its Mexican work force to balloon to 1,000 by the end of the year with the building of a third facility.

The Wichita-based firm is investing $20 million in a 180,000-square-foot plant in Chihuahua, Mexico, to do sheet metal assembly work for King Air turboprops and Hawker jets along with electrical assembly work.

"We have seen a high level of quality and craftsmanship coming out of the skilled work force in Chihuahua," Hawker Beechcraft CEO Bill Boisture said during a conference call Thursday.

The Wichita Eagle reported Boisture declined to give details on the incentives the company will receive. He said the company has "great support" from the Mexican government, a key factor in its decision to expand there.

Hawker Beechcraft announced last year that it is closing two plants in Wichita and moving the work from there, along with King Air-related back shop operations, to outside suppliers and to Mexico.

"This new facility will absorb some of the sheet metal fabrication work that's moving out of these other, older facilities," Boisture said.

The company is also transferring about $25 million of work to outside suppliers across Kansas, although the work won't be done in Wichita, Boisture said.

Hawker Beechcraft opened its first facility in Chihuahua in 2007 to manufacture light sheet metal assembly. It currently has 400 workers at the two plants, and plans to expand that number to 1,000 when it opens its third facility.

"With the opening of its second plant in the city, Hawker Beechcraft reaffirms its commitment to the state of Chihuahua," Cesar Horacio Duarte Jaquez, governor of the state of Chihuahua, said in a statement.

A key factor in choosing Chihuahua was its High Technology Training Center CENALTEC Campus Chihuahua, a training center for machining, sheet metal, painting and other techniques and processes.

The burgeoning aviation hub in Mexico also includes plants for Honeywell, Goodrich, Cessna and Gulfstream.

Look at all the stuff that continues to be "invented in the U.S.A. The U.S.A. has always been about innovation. The U.S.A. innovated the "manufacturing process". Those days are over now and we're off to innovate new and better stuff.

What's going on now is normal. It's always been going on.

"They" being China?

How do you know this?

I always hear middle easterners on the radio. Just saying'.

Then I could say the same thing about middle easterners here. I guess Atlanta is closer to the middle east and Phoenix is closer to China. Maybe it's just geography.

When I was at Grand Forks UND would train China Air pilots. They came over to North Dakota after a few months in England learning "Engrish". They started their training in the Piper Arrows UND had at the time. God forbid if there was a runway change after they departed. They didn't care, just came in and landed the same runway they took off from. There's no phrase for go around in Chinese. The closest you can get is "chung fe", it means fly away. Once things got a little stressful for the chinese pilots they simply jettisoned all knoweledge of english and started blabbering chinese. We'd send them away until they settled down.