That thing's about as sexy as a 50's Apache = a flying spud.

It's the same problem as sub-compact cars. you can make the car smaller but it still has to fit standard size people inside, so it becomes a little bulbous in the middle

It sure is nice inside, though.

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And I still use WordPerfect, and it is up to version 18 (X8). Still fully supported, and still profoundly better than Word for text processing.

Likely to make the jump to Turd -- err, Word -- soon, though. More's the pity.

If Cirrus is losing money on each one, they can avoid bankruptcy in 2018 by doing a number of things.

They can build them really slowly. That's the apparent initial strategy so far. They had predicted 220 built by end of this year, revised to 60, and that seems highly unlikely at this stage. The slower you build them, the less you lose, but it does cost more per unit to some degree. At some point, supplier contracts with any sunset dates will start to time out and make things harder.

They can renege on the contract and raise the price. I don't see how they get all the way into the mid 300s without doing this at some point. Eclipse had to at one stage. The SF50 is not a list price $1.4M aircraft. Basically, each position holder accepts the new price or gets their deposit back.

They could cancel the project and refund the deposits outright.

Their investors/owners can again infuse cash. I sense there is not much tolerance for this at this stage given there is no return on that money. The Chinese are not stupid.

They could sell to another firm. Not clear who that would be, though Textron bought Beechcraft.

And about a dozen other possible outcomes to escape this mess.

While it is possible bankruptcy occurs in 2018, but there are many other outcomes, so your bet is too lopsided on the odds to be accepted. A more reasonable wager would be that Cirrus goes bankrupt, raises the price of contracted positions, or cancels the program before they deliver position 341 (the highest position at the $1.39M price that I know of). Essentially, do you believe Cirrus can execute the plan as it stands now?

Cirrus was pretty close to bankruptcy in 2010 (witness the L-3 lawsuit, not paying rent, etc). They then sold to the Chinese for $210M. But that money goes to founders/owners and isn't working capital. How much money the Chinese brought as capital is not known, but it would be hard to imagine that was over $200M.

In 2011, following the Chinese buyout, Cirrus said the SF50 program would take $100M and 3 years to certify. I suspect it was double the money since it was nearly double the time. Facing losing more millions now in production for the next 3-4 years isn't gong to go over well. So whatever capital was infused has probably been used up. After all, once you get into production, you are SUPPOSED to make money at that point and not need capital any more.

Mike C.

I was trying to find something that would benefit others.

A year of higher signal to noise ratio on BT seemed like a worthy goal.

Mike C.

Wait... which of you would have to win for that to happen?

That is left to each reader to decide. :-)

Mike C.

So were the Chinese stupid to invest by not doing their due diligence or are they stupid now for maintaining their failing investment? My thought is that they really don't care about the next 3-4 years and are looking at this as a long term investment and the LCV of their customer base.

Chip-

Glad I was busy today and missed out on the last 10 pages.

It does not help achieve the cost reductions your theories require.


Still quite a lot of humans in that "robot" video.

Building airplanes is fundamentally labor intensive due to low volumes.

Mike C.

By the time they were almost certified Cirrus would have a very good idea of the production costs for the initial series.
If the contracts were that far under water, they could have canceled the program and that would have ended the contracts, returning just the deposits.
As such, it is a pretty safe bet that the loss rate is likely lower then the deposit amounts.

Tim

Exactly. But we can all be experts in lieu of those minor details!

Chip-

Not clear that is true without a big finish.

Currently, 17 SF50s on the US registry, of which 8 are registered to Cirrus, thus only 9 SF50s delivered to customers.
[/quote]

Cirrus was showing this SF-50 at the NBAA Expo at MMU earlier this month. So you can’t judge deliveries by just US registry numbers.

[/quote]


Looking good. Sexy tail.

Selling planes for $1.4M that cost $6M to make?

Thinking that is the opposite of "great".

Mike C.[/quote]

Sorry SF 50 6 million Dollars ? Then my Lexus Ls460 should be worth at least 1,5 M

Eclipse were $6M each when counting all expenses (including development).

SF50s, at present delivered numbers, are about $35M/each. It will be a while, possibly never, before they break even.

Mike C.