Louis Palmenteri of Rhome, Texas
Not only are there more than 6,000 completed Van’s Aircraft RV kits now flying, the number is growing by two a day. On Feb. 12, the total was 6,081, two higher than the morning of that same day.
The 6,000th was completed by Louis Palmenteri of Rhome, Texas, and flew for the first time in December 2008. It took him between three and four years to build. Van’s has an RV-12 that it plans to enter into both the light sport aircraft (SLSA) and experimental light sport aircraft (ELSA) markets. The ELSA model is expected to fly away at a total cost of less than $65,000.
Van’s Aircraft has been supplying kits for 33 years, so the 6,000 number represents an average of one new airplane in the air every other day for the history of the company.
According to Richard VanGrunsven, founder of the company: “We have shipped starts for more than 1,200 aircraft in the last two years, and with the reduced building time required to build our newer designs like the RV-10 and the Light Sport RV-12, we look forward to seeing the next thousand RVs fly in an even shorter time than the last thousand.”
