Have the collective heads over on Mooneyspace exploded yet? That one thread was somewhere around 36 pages when I last checked.

Good to see for the employees, but they have to be getting tired of this.

Brian

Don't know, I'm here ..... instead of there

Great news for Mooney... and Kerrville...

That wasn't a very informative article. What is the current and future demand for Mooney airplanes? Bottom line: If the demand is there, workers will have a job.

Mooney needs an owner that understands the market for their planes, fills that niche and provides parts/updates to current owners. They will have to slim the company in my opinion to a size that makes money on 30-40 aircraft per year along with parts sales. Unless a diesel engine is developed/certified or engineering can replace the landing gear with a newer style and add 3-600 lbs of useful to it or both I don't see a bigger market. I do think it would be possible if the investment was appropriate for that volume to make money.

It is a great flying machine, terrific to learn landings that require exact speed/energy control, hell for stout airframe and wings that a pilot can enjoy if he likes speed, TKS, efficiency and is comfortable in the cockpit. Everyone can argue about it's size but I've measured and it is wider than a Bonanza A-G36 and for a long legged guy is very comfortable. Only one data point here.

I don't think it needs new landing gear or a diesel, it does need useful load. There's two ways to get there, though. Increase gross, reduce empty weight. Mooney could do a lot of the latter. Replacing the big bore Continentals with four banger Lycomings and small bore Continentals would save a LOT of weight. It'd cost Mooney "fastest piston single" bragging rights, but that doesn't appear to be selling planes and useful load does (ask Cirrus or Beechcraft.) You'd end up with, essentially, two door long body versions of the 201 and Encore, probably the best two planes Mooney has ever built, with ~1100 pound UL, and both the J and K models were brisk sellers.

That's a big ask. The market for their planes is clearly small, and anyone with the wherewithal to buy an airplane company probably isn't interested in such a tenuous business model, notwithstanding the last several owners.

In any case, the lauded product line is not capable of supporting the overhead imposed by previous owners, like sending the CEO home to Florida on a Twin Commander 690A every weekend.

Run the parts department well, have a small team on assembly, and you better not have many FTEs after that.

Update drawings to current spec

Better supply of spare parts on rotable item.

They need the UL numbers bumped up to compete

The problem as explained to me is...

Gross weight limited by landing gear, which is integral to the wing and has been modded as far as it can go in the transition from lighter short body Mooneys of the 60’s to the long body Moonies of the 90’s and today.

Big engineering change required to get gross weights to compete with G36 and Cirrus and Saratoga. Basically a new wing. But with the current gross weight, you can’t get the added equipment to compete (A/C, TKS, Chute) and still carry passengers / luggage.

From a marketing perspective, maybe you could go light on equipment and sell based on 1/2 the cost of a Cirrus / A36 and faster.... (just lacking the chute, A/C, decice). But Mooney doesn’t make sense as a low cost competitor due to the high manufacturing cost associated with the steel tube fuselage. You have to build the plane “twice” compared to a monocoque design. And the low cost “new” competition has been losing to used planes for decades now.

So that doesn’t work either. Not sure how to solve the issue.

I would just try to run as a parts company to support the fleet.

If the design is not capable of doing what’s required, the solution is obvious: design an actual new airplane. Not a new dress for a 50 year old airplane. Not a cheap fix, but very obvious. If you can’t open a can of peas because the only tool you have is a hammer, a new handle on the hammer isn’t the solution.

Sure. But if you’re looking at a clean sheet design, how is it better for “Mooney” to do that compared to a new company and brand? No connection to the legacy plane, might as well raise money and do it as a new venture.

I’ll sit back and watch that craziness from afar Jesse.

New money coming into a piston single. Maybe we can interest
Bloomberg to lose a few in that endeavor... better chance than winning
Presidency of... google.