Airplane markets are dead!

[joejenie]

I have had my King Katmai for sale for 3 months and still no sale! :mad: If you would have told me that would have happened a year ago, I would have told you that you were crazy! Look at the updated ad in the marketplace. Make me an offer! I want the plane gone ASAP. I need the hangar space for something different.

[JJbely]

I have had my King Katmai for sale for 3 months and still no sale! :mad: If you would have told me that would have happened a year ago, I would have told you that you were crazy! Look at the updated ad in the marketplace. Make me an offer! I want the plane gone ASAP. I need the hangar space for something different.

I think you should rent some extra hangar space for a year or two. It's probably as hard to sell than a Ferrari, these days. The market is truly dead.

Cheers

JJ

[kwmoore]

I'm guessing that when the "Experimental" label comes off, it will be gone in short order.

Bloody FAA takes its own sweet time about these things. Sort of like "Manana," but without the sense of urgency. :rolleyes:

[joejenie]

I've had a few calls the last 3 days, but everyone is looking to steal it. I agree with you Kevin that the experimental stickers coming off should sell it. There has been several people walk due to that. What's funny is the Experimental stickers don't affect financing or insurance, but people are just funny.

Someone will get a really good deal on a really nice plane. Hell, i wish I could have found this deal when I was looking for a Katmai 18 months ago! ;)

[Todd]

Over the years I have found a poor economy interesting when it comes to building our airplanes. Jo and I started out with our own aviation business in 1972. From that point to now we have seen quite a number of hard economic times and a bunch of aircraft companies come and go. Yet our own aircraft sales have never done better than during these periods. In the early to mid 1980's we were building the Wren 460 at a rate of one airplane every four days. Even though banks were getting interest rates of a whopping 23% for their loans our production was sold out for 18 months. I remember at that time having our company airplane financed with a local bank at just over 23%. Various people whom I respected told me we could never sell the airplane with interest rates that high yet we sold a ton of airplanes. During other hard economic times we sold a bunch of our aircraft to owners coming out of expensive twin engine airplanes. It's strange but it seems a poor economy actually increases the sales of our airplane.

Over the past ten years most of our really nice used 260SE's bring anywhere from $190,000 to $270,000. This of course depends on engine time, cosmetics and avionics. Even with the times as they are this price range has not seemed to change which I think says a lot for our aircraft.

Over the past thirty plus years of having a buisness I have come to realize that when the good times are rolling one never thinks they will end and yet they do. At the same time when things are really bad one tends to think things will never get better and yet it does.

Todd

[joejenie]

Well, I've decided to list my plane for sale with Todd Peterson and I'm flying back to ElDorado KS in the morning. I figure he is probably the best suited for selling what this bird will really do. New price is $359,900 which is 27k less than I have in it! OUCH.

He will be doing an annual as well as a DER inspection to take it out of "experimental" category in the next few weeks. It's a 1 year wait to have one of these birds built, so if you are interested, don't wait. It will be gone. It's an unbellieveable plane with no issues. It's always funny taking off at 40 knots putting the nose straight up at 1500+ ft per minute and watching peoples faces who have been in 182's before. They can't believe it.

It would be fun to keep, but it really doesn't meet my needs. I thought I would do some bush flying but found I don't really have the time and when I do have time to fly, my whole family is with me traveling somewhere in my TBM. Oh well, maybe in 20 years when I retire....