The second is insured, and the first one is not. Interesting that in the first one, they admit they only owe them $3.5.

Yvés, for most companies in the US, this kind of stuff is a part of their business plan. In the first one, no doubt the companies will settle and move on eventually. As for the Cirrus pilot, the tort part of our legal system is mostly a mess, but it is predictable, and included in planning. And there are always many rounds to the fight before any money changes hands.

Cirrus might have to do what others have done. Just hit the X10 button on the parts prices!

The L3 suit is a simple commercial transaction. If damages are spelled out in the contract, then that's what L3 will get. If not, then consequential damages. And yes, those damages are expenses that definitely will reduce profits. If there are no profits, they will come out of assets.

The personal injury suit is different. Minnesota is a comparative fault state. That means that even though the plaintiff is partly at fault, he or in this case his estate can still recover damages. The plaintiff, Prokop received a $9.0 million award. That was reduced from the $12 million the jury awarded as a result of plaintiff's own negligence. That award will divided between the UND Foundation and Cirrus. The story makes no reference to the jury's apportionment of fault. If it did not apportion fault, then UND Foundation and Cirrus will have to battle that out among themselves. While Minnesota is generally thought of as a plaintiff friendly state, I suspect that the awards are out of line even there. Look for the courts to whittle those down to something like $1-2 million for each plaintiff. The other issue that has not been reported is the presence of liability insurance. I suspect that both Cirrus and UND Foundation have liability insurance that will actually be paying the awards. The joke about Cirrus is, the price is $100,000 for the airplane and $200,000 for the products liability insurance.

Alan Bradley

Not to change the subject too much, but why are there so many Cirrus loss of control accidents. Another one crashed a couple days ago at Crystal in Minnesota. The pilot had flown over 7 hours that day and was landing at night in fairly good weather. I know there have been some others, namely one where a landing Cirrus took out two other planes amd killed several. Is this a difficult airplane to fly?

I was told by an industry insider, a few months back, not to expect any of the piston players to be around by the end of the year except Beech and Cessna. Maybe Piper will survive now with the announcment of their new money, we'll see. Nobody has been making money in the piston market for a long time. It's not even close to survivable levels at this point. I think if you're a builder totally dependant on piston sales to survive, the day of recovery is way too far away.

There has been a rumor that has been floating around that Cirrus has been trying to sell their SJ50 Jet off. Did anybody notice that their Jet mockup wasn't at Cirrus's Sun N Fun display? I wonder why?

Cessna just announced another 1700 layoffs where their employment will now fall below 50% of their normal staffing. Cessna has huge strengths with their wide product line, and if they're fighting this hard for survival, it has to be real ugly at Cirrus. Earlier this year, Cirrus was only building 5 or 6 airplanes a month! Cirrus's future depends on how long somebody will continue to dump money.

It's really bad news for us piston guys.

exactly - this is nothing to a large american company.

A big part of Cessna's woes are related to the unwarranted beating business jets have taken in the media and from Congress and the President. The 172 and 182 are great designs, I've owned a couple of 172s and made money on them. An air conditioned G1000 182 is really a nice, if expensive flying machine with no real vices except it is slow. The Bonanza is a terrific design that has weathered the worst and best economies we have seen. I suspect it, along with the 172 and 182 will come through this downturn as well. That is a small base to spread costs over, but we have been there before and worse. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there were no 172s and 182s.

Alan Bradley

Fatal crash puts Cirrus in spotlight again

..."Some industry observers believed that Cirrus had developed the next "doctor killer,'' a nickname once associated with the V-tail Beech Bonanza, another slick, high-performance model involved in a series of fatal accidents in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The fast-for-its-day Bonanza was said to attract pilots who had more money than skill."

http://www.startribune.com/business/482 ... DEh7P:DiUs

See, having money is a problem...