mudobber

No this is not a cruel April Fools Joke, but Quest Aircraft layed off 55 Employee's yesterday (4/1/10). This brings the total employee's shown the door up around 100 folks. Unfortunately, their problems have gone beyond growing pains and into the many pitfalls that have taken many a fine aircraft company down with it.

BushwickBill hit much of the issues right on. Part of their problems stem from the economy, but most of their problems come from their decision to hire former execs from other failed aircraft companies. The top of Quest is heavily laden with guys who had a large hand in Columbia Aircraft, Honda Jet, Glasair, just to name a few. They came to Quest and obviously didnt learn from their mistakes.

Another major problem is that they sold airplanes with options not even designed yet. With customers banging on the door for an airplane 3 years past their given delivery date, Quest finally got to work on the deiceing system and the belly pod, only to run into unforseen problems and thus unable to satisfy customers.

Orders have cancelled so fast, Quest first slowed down production and layed off employee's, but with no new orders coming in, the company has run into a huge cashflow problem. The production floor was cut back to 30 then 20 hours per week.

I'm really sorry to paint such an sad picture for everyone here, but these are the facts as I've lived them as a employee of Quest. I have since left for a new job, but still have many friends there.

The Kodiak is a wonderful aircraft and I hope the type certificate and hard work put into it does not die along with the company. I really hope someone buys the ability to manufacture the kodiak after the dust settles.

or here's an Idea. Someone could build kodiak type wings for the Caravan, and actually have a better airplane and I bet you could do it cheaper. Refurbish old caravans with new wings and avionics and be ahead of the game.