Columbia Aircraft
 |
|
| privately held company | |
| Industry | general aviation |
| Fate | Chapter 11 & taken over by Cessna |
| Founded | April 3, 1995 |
| Defunct | November 27, 2007 |
| Headquarters | Bend, Oregon |
| Products |
Columbia 300 Columbia 350 Columbia 400 |
| Parent | Cessna/Textron |
| Website | www |
The Columbia Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation was an aircraft manufacturer that designed and built light general aviation aircraft. In November 2007 it became a division of Cessna.
In 1994 NASA launched the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) project in an attempt to re-energize the rapidly shrinking general aviation (GA) market. A series of factors, including new regulatory requirements and immense legal liability lawsuit settlements made the GA field unprofitable and most manufacturers had abandoned production of piston-engined light aircraft to concentrate on the business turbine aircraft market. As a result, GA design work had basically ended and aircraft for sale in 1990 were essentially the same as those from the 1970s. With a thriving market for used aircraft, American GA aircraft production numbers declined from 18,000 in 1978 to 954 in 1993, an all-time low.
During the same period the kit-built market was thriving. Free of some of the problems that certified aircraft had, and populated largely by experimenters looking for better performance, the kit market expanded rapidly in the 1980s. Designs available as kits often surpassed the performance of certified aircraft, while also being much less expensive. A leading kit manufacturer, Lancair's high performance Lancair IV design set a number of records, including a long-range flight at 360–mph.
As part of AGATE, NASA used a Lancair ES as a testbed for advanced avionics fits. The ES was a version of the unpressurized Lancair IV with fixed landing gear. Lancair founder Lance Neibauer was encouraged to certify the design, which would make it one of the first all-new GA aircraft certified in years.
On 3 April 1995 Lancair established a new company, Pacific Aviation Composites USA, in Redmond, Oregon. Originally intended simply to spread out production of the existing Lancair aircraft product lines, the new factory was rechristened Lancair Certified and was used as the main site for what was then known as the Lancair LC-40, for "Lancair Certified, model 40". The first prototype flew in July 1996, followed by the certification prototype in early 1997.
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Wikipedia