Skycatcher reaches inglorious end - AOPA

It seems Cessna has pulled the Skycatcher from its lineup.
Remaining 80 aircraft to be used for spare parts for the 195 in public registry.

 

This news was expected by anyone who kept up with rumors in Wichita the last ten years. The 162 could not be made as cheaply as Cessna originally thought. The original price point was to be a bit over $100k and to do that, which was very cheap for a new high-tech airplane, the cost structure included using cheap foreign labor, lower engineering standards (ASTM), and fairly large production quantities. But blow by blow the plan fell apart as additional costs were stacked on to the cost list. By the time the 162 arrived at a final price it was too high to do any serious volume. It eventually got to $150k.

It was a noble experiment. The product was good, the company was being smart. But the lesson is clear to any light airplane manufacturer that cares to watch, if you plan to make a cheaper machine by taking radical cost reduction measures, you had better know what you are actually doing. Boeing went through a similar learning cycle with the 787.

 

Any manufacturer thinking about building a new plane anytime soon would do well to wait for the certifications standards rewrite. It passed in Congress, how soon the FAA gets around to actually implementing it remains to be seen.

 

How are those standards going to be from a GA standpoint?

Easier, or harder to get a Type/Prod Cert, cheaper/more costly to get a new design or upgrade to market, etc.

I know I'm hoping for Cheaper/Faster, but the Govt is involved so neither is likely.

 

I was also expecting the "162" to have a significantly improved useful load or reduce fuel burn compared to the 152/150, but it ended up being about the same, which begs the question, how exactly did the last 60 years of progress benefit us here? Use of modern materials and modern aerodynamics should have allowed for some significant advantage, but performance wise it seemed to fall short. When they bolted that 0-200 to it, it seemed doomed to me, that and the spin-testing...

 

Skycatcher was supposed to be an alternative to highly expensive single engine pistons that classic Skyhawks had become ($350k). For a third of the money you could have a light sport airplane, a brand new design with Garmin glass and all the cool things you need, like a ballistic parachutes and a more comfortable cabin than the 152 ever had. The 162 was not intended to be a direct replacement for the 152 because the latter was to heavy to qualify under light sport rules permitting milder pilot licensing requirements. People who own/fly SC's love them, and the problems with the tail were quickly solved during testing. See this old thread-

Vmc for a single engine airplane

 

Well, it IS the replacement for the 150/152 if it's a plane that is smaller, lighter, and cheaper than the 172. It fits in the line-up in the exact same place and has nearly the exact same performance. I'm not claiming the 150 was a "light sport" aircraft, only that it was placed in the same spot in Cessna's line-up. I know what they intended to do, but in the end it couldn't accomplish it for the intended price and ended up costing as much as a 172 from just a few years prior.

I compare this with something like the DA42, which at the NG model is just a work of art, harnessing less hp/lb than something like a seminole or dutchess to go faster, climb at a higher rate (fixed for the most part due to turbo-normalization) and sip fuel relatively. That's harnessing not only diesel engines, but modern aerodynamics and construction techniques that simply make it able to achieve those numbers, not even mentioning what the new NG+ does (gets a good performance bump).

It honestly just seemed like cessna threw everything together they could just to meet a price-point (that the ended up unable to meet). In doing so, they lost out on the amazing performance of other airplanes like Cub Crafters or doing the same stuff for cheaper with a conventional panel. Those other companies had something tangible beyond just meeting a pricepoint and being able to say "you can buy an airplane". Anyone can go buy a used airplane, but why buy a new airplane? "Well, this new airplane will do everything that one of those old tired 150s will do, plus it will climb like a rocket or get you into real short fields and be tons of fun in the back country". Or maybe Cessna builds the skycatcher to aerobatic standards and does a throwback to the aerobat days. You can make a light-sport aerobatic, it's recently been done. But the skycatcher didn't have anywhere near this kind of development, it was just put together to meet a pricepoint it seems, and as such, it was doomed from the beginning, from aircraft that were engineered from the beginning to either minimize cost from the get-go or maximize some kind of performance criteria.

 

I disagree it had no merit, it was right on for what it was intended. The business case was solid. We can shoot it down now because Cessna so kindly showed us you can't build a well-equipped light sport airplane for only $100k, or $150k either for that matter. But the SC only failed in that manner- it failed to meet its price point. A modern 152 would be well over $200k and a Diamond DA-20 is over $200k, and here is an airplane that can supposedly do all that for half the cost. I think the reasoning at Cessna for canning the SkyCatcher probably is that we can make money on these things at around $200k, but at that price point there are better airplanes like the Katana.

 

My understanding is that as the rules are currently written, GA aircraft of the C-172 weight class have to meet certification standards that apply to bigger/heavier airplanes. There is no differentiation. This is where a vast majority of the development cost is tagged on. Plus there has been no real revisit to the rules in decades to take into account new manufacturing techniques, technology, etc.

Look at a new C-182, there's probably no more than a few thousand bucks worth of aluminum, and it's using a 1940's era engine with mechanical magnetos. Yet a new one is almost a half million bucks. I'm not saying gov't regulation and certification standards haven't helped improve safety, but the free market has a way of taking care of that too.

 

Yeah, good point. I hope the new government stance strikes a lot better balance between government regulation and letting the free market work.