Production Skycatcher Debuts at AOPA Summit; AVweb Flies It

With more than 1,000 orders for its Skycatcher LSA booked, Cessna is moving apace to bring the airplane into series production, and it showed up at AOPA Summit in Tampa with a conforming airplane. Cessna’s Kirby Ortega told AVweb the airplane in display was built in Wichita, although the wings – which we inspected carefully – were manufactured in China. Detailing looks good throughout the aircraft, and gone is the purple paint of the proof of concept version. Ortega showed us changes in the wing – it’s a little thicker to improve lift – and changes to the tail to increase spin resistance. Oretega said Cessna plans to deliver at least one Skycatcher before year’s end and to ramp up production to 300 to 400 a year going forward.