How do you pronounce that company? Is it Lance-air, lank-care, laun-ciere?

Lance-Air, after its founder, Lance Neibauer.

That's a great news. I could never understand why Lanceair took ES out of production in the first place. It was in the class of it's own in the homebuilt world, nothing like it.

I've heard when they sold the Columbia portion off they agreed not to compete against it by continuing to offer the ES, they sold remaining stock and dialed down production

I think it's the best value on market

I know nothing about this deal but given the location near the Mexican border, there's a good chance this deal was struck long before the election and predicated on producing parts in Mexico. With the Trumpster in the big chair, I bet they're busy wearing out the spreadsheets.

Gotta believe someone at least pondered that possibility but dumber things have been done.

What?

The Lancair story is a little more complex than that, Lance sold the kit company to one of his customers back in the early 2000's to help fund expansion of production facilities to build the Lancair Columbia 300, 350, 400 Certified aircraft, which at the time had dealers nationwide hungry for airplanes and over two years of production backlog.

Lance and I have been friends since I sold him a 980 Commander back in 2002, so I watched all that he went through to grow and build the company, he's a fascinating guy. He worked diligently for several years to attract US based investors, but Wall Street was scared of airplanes and the liability. Lance turned to the Malaysian Government for funding, they were able to provide a huge infusion of cash.. and EGO.

They began pushing Lance to the sidelines almost immediately. The first problem with that is the fact that he was the spirit of the company, the second and more egregious mistake is that they took his name off the airplane. They used the excuse that they wanted to distance themselves from the kit company... but the real reason was pure ego.

Funny sideline, the first time I talked to Lance on the phone I said "Lance, what are you to Lancair... or are you Lancair" he laughed and said "I am, I had to call the company Lancair because Alvin-Air sounded stupid"

His middle name is Alvin.

So the Chinese in their infinite wisdom changed the name of the company to Columbia Aircraft, it was the single largest marketing mistake I have ever seen a branded company make. There's more to the story, but the backlog of orders dried up, Lance departed the company and the Malaysians ran it into bankruptcy.

Cessna purchased the company out of bankruptcy for $25M a fraction of what the company was worth when Lance was at the helm and a small percentage of what the Malaysians had invested.

The kit company has remained viable throughout, though I haven't seen a lot of passion and energy poured into it, I know Mark Hufstettler as well, and with his cash and Lance being involved again I suspect you will see great things from Lancair.

As far as proximity to Mexico, that not only makes zero sense, but it simply had nothing to do with it. Mark has been in Uvalde for longer than I can remember, and while he now owns the company there are no plans I'm aware of to have anything produced in Mexico.

If they start talking about doing anything in Mexico I will give them a list of phone numbers of people to call who have learned their lesson when trying to produce things in Mexico, including a friend who is head of security for Caterpillar.

Columbia/Cessna already got burned by mexico production, they aren't doing that again, that comment was just nonsense

It sounds like they quite building the ES... just because, there wasn't an agreement to stop building it, because Lance actually sold the kit company long before they stopped building the ES. I seems that the previous owner no longer had a passion for the company, you would expect a kit company to produce new and exciting models and to be innovative.

I think you will see some great things and new models out of Lancair, it's a short timetable but they will have a presence at Oshkosh.

I may have to be there this year

Lancair had some manufacturing in the Philippines. Vans aircraft still uses the Philippines as well for their fast build airplanes.

An ES-P with electric wing heat and a parachute would be very hi on my want to have list.

I hope they do restart production....

From what I understand they are moving everything back from the Philippines... I'm not sure but I expect that Kevin Nelms might have had something to do with the Philippine deal... I haven't talked to him in years, but he loved the Philippines and was a Lancair dealer with interest over there.

The biggest issue to brining some of these legacy models back to market is the condition of the molds. The word on the street was they were in pretty bad condition and half the stuff in the Philippines was missing. The last model they built, the Legacy turns 20 next year. Thats a long time for the molds to last.