By now, most of the general aviation community has heard Cessna's lofty claim regarding the restart of its single-engine restart program. Here's the biggest boast: Cessna says it can sell 2,000 single-engine piston airplanes a year, for 10 years. Is this some new kind of corporate group think, or does the company really believe what it says?
It really believes what it says.
Now that the product liability issue has apparently been set on the back burner, Cessna's approach to piston singles has shifted from that of a moral crusade to one of pure commerce.
"We've studied the results of our market research, and all of it supports our re-entering the [single-engine] market," a Cessna spokesman said. "This will be a major opportunity for Cessna, Textron [Cessna's parent company and owner of engine-manufacturer Lycoming], McCauley, Cessna Finance Corporation, the Cessna Pilot Centers, and lots of vendors. Our earnings will grow, and so will our return on investment. We'll re- establish our market leadership and have a high potential for international sales, too."
One Cessna survey was sent to retail owners of all post-1977 model year Cessna 172s, 182s, and 206s. Another survey went to fixed base operators. Cessna took those results, inventoried their own statistics, then factored in the conclusions from an FAA forecast of the single-engine fleet size from 1998 to 2005.
Cessna's determinations? That the piston single fleet will remain at about 131,000 aircraft, but that 3,166 airplanes per year will be lost to wrecks, partings-out, and other unsavory paths of attrition. That other manufacturers — assuming current levels of production — will be able to cover only about 20 percent of that attrition. And, therefore, that 80 percent of the 3,166, or about 2,500 airplanes, represents a big sales opportunity for Cessna.
Then there are the Cessnas hard at work as trainers. Some 13,638 Cessna singles labor at that job, and who knows how many of them will need to be replaced in the next 10 years? Among today's 363 active Cessna Pilot Centers alone, 2,561 Cessna singles are in use. There are 125 colleges and universities with flight training programs, and all of them will need to replace their 1,585 singles (765 of them Cessnas) sooner or later. Then there are federal and state governments (with 1,750 Cessnas), the military (about 5,000 Cessna singles), and the Civil Air Patrol (with more than 500 Cessna singles).
With an average fleet age of 29 years, all the above aircraft are living on borrowed time, and Cessna figures that a market for 2,300 to 3,200 new Cessna singles per year is a safe bet. The company estimates that 30 to 40 percent of its new sales will consist of exports.
"Twenty thousand aircraft over 10 years is doable," the Cessna official said. "We won't get to 2,000 a year right away, of course. In 1996, we'll probably build 30 airplanes. In 1997, 1,200. By 1998, we should be at 2,000 per year."
These hypotheses count on some heady assumptions. One is that every old Cessna will be replaced with a new one. The other is that Cessna captures a near-monopoly on sales of all new singles.
Then there's the matter of price and manufacturing economics. When asked about Cessna's anticipated break-even point — the number of aircraft that must be sold to recoup the factory spool-up investment — Cessna would not comment. And price? "I couldn't even give you a ballpark price," the spokesman said.
