Another leg down:

Here's an article about Mooney's employment dropping to about 10 total! They also have to attract new investors for any chance to re-start production.

http://aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentB ... 627920b4e&

The single piston market is pretty well served without Mooney right now, and with at least a few years for GA recovery, there's not much hope in Kerrville.

Sad. If I had the money I'd buy one to help them out!

I really like mooney aircraft, we work on them as a service center. I hope they can pull through.

They couldn't even take an order today. They don't have the funding to start the build.

While I deciding whether to buy my G36, I looked at a similar equipped Mooney. The one I looked at had around 50 demo hours, but it was still only $60,000 less than what I paid for my zero hour G36. It wasn't a difficult decison to walk away.

I flew a M20F as a kid and loved it. Back when panels were small and 200 HP was acceptable, the package worked very well. They were touted as the economical alternative. Expectations changed. Much of the cost to build now goes into the Garmin avionics, the big bore motor, and the liability insurance. Where can Mooney find a significant cost advantage to maintain a niche in a full market?

Mooneys have been a good value on the used market, but they come up short when new. And...they gotta have new sales for survival.

They must create a bigger pricing spread and promises for a good rate of return while searching for new investment is a catch 22.

I've often wondered about the manufacturing cost differential between a riveted structure and composite. I've assumed that composite should be cheaper (molded), but there doesn't appear to be a significant difference in the final price.

Problem is that there are too many choices for the money. They could best stay alive by continuing to supply parts and then possibly begin a refurbish/retrofit campaign to start modernizing the older airframes.

Don't know enough about them to think about starting to collect the derelicts and wrecks and then parting them out. With Bonanzas, many folks have made some good side money.

Except when capitalize the cost of that mammoth autoclave........ cha ching.

Gary

I hope I'm wrong, but I think we saw the last new Mooney rolled off the line about 18 months ago. Three of the Acclaims pictured in the article are currently for sale.

Very sad.

Brian

It is too bad. I hope it doesn't happen to the beech pistons.

I wonder if they'll (or someone) will stand up a support company for parts and engineering. I recall attending some RAC financial presentations when I worked for Raytheon. The best margins for OEMs come from product support, selling new aircraft wasn't very profitable - but supporting the fleet was. Highest margins of all, engineering support (like someone drives a tug into a hawker and they ask beech to engineer the repair.

They couldn't even take an order today. They don't have the funding to start the build.

While I deciding whether to buy my G36, I looked at a similar equipped Mooney. The one I looked at had around 50 demo hours, but it was still only $60,000 less than what I paid for my zero hour G36. It wasn't a difficult decison to walk away.

I flew a M20F as a kid and loved it. Back when panels were small and 200 HP was acceptable, the package worked very well. They were touted as the economical alternative. Expectations changed. Much of the cost to build now goes into the Garmin avionics, the big bore motor, and the liability insurance. Where can Mooney find a significant cost advantage to maintain a niche in a full market?

Mooneys have been a good value on the used market, but they come up short when new. And...they gotta have new sales for survival.

They must create a bigger pricing spread and promises for a good rate of return while searching for new investment is a catch 22.

Supporting product I think was Henry Ford's business model. Heck, if this were really true for Beech, we would all be flying new aircraft. As for the Hawker Beech design engineering team, only insurance companies could afford them. It would be nice if they offered a structural repair manual for their singles or some other inexpensive source for related repairs.

I will always be a mooniac and would hate to see them leave the competition.

+1
Always liked Mooneys, I even named my dog Mooney