Symphony Aircraft Industries
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| Private | |
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Fate | Bankrupt 22 January 2007 |
| Founded | December 2003 |
| Headquarters | Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada |
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Key people
|
Paul Costanzo, CEO (September 2003 - January 2007) |
| Products | General aviation aircraft |
Symphony Aircraft Industries (SAI) was a light aircraft manufacturer based in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada.
Between May 2005 and January 2007 SAI manufactured the Symphony SA-160 aircraft for the personal use, touring and flight training market. On January 22, 2007, it declared bankruptcy and ceased operations. The company's motto was Certified Fun
SAI was started in September 2003 as the North American production arm of Ostmecklenburgische Flugzeugbau GmbH, (East Mecklenburg Aircraft Works Limited). The company was commonly known as OMF Aircraft. OMF was formed by Mathias Stinnes in 1998 and was headquartered in Neubrandenburg Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Stinnes formed OMF Aircraft to produce a FAR 23 certified version of the Stoddard-Hamilton Glastar. He had built and flown one of these amateur-built aircraft in the 1990s and believed that it would make a good production aircraft. The certified version of the Glastar was to be called the OMF-100-160 Symphony with certification targeted for 2000.
Realizing that the bulk of the market for this aircraft was in North America Stinnes set up a production facility in Trois-Rivières with financial help from the Government of Quebec. The plant building was constructed by the Town of Trois-Rivières and leased to OMF. The plant was opened in September 2003.
OMF suffered from under-financing during its start-up phase and declared bankruptcy in December 2003. Due to agreements in place, the production rights for the OMF-100-160 Symphony resided in Canada while the intellectual property rights were retained in Germany.
The Canadian plant operation was reorganized as a private company under the name of Symphony Aircraft Industries, while the intellectual property rights to the OMF-100-160 Symphony were sold by the bankruptcy trustees to a new German company, OMF Flugzeugwerk.
An agreement was signed between OMF Flugzeugwerk and Symphony Aircraft to produce the design on two production lines in North America and Europe. This soon proved unworkable and OMF Flugzeugwerk sold out their interests to SAI in February 2005.
SAI redesignated the aircraft as the Symphony SA-160 and completed Transport Canada certification under CAR 523, with Transport Canada manufacturing approval achieved in March 2005.
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Wikipedia