Dave Higdon/Independence, KANSAS
Cessna has acknowledged another setback in its efforts to field three piston singles and, in turn, another roadblock in its efforts to reach production levels anticipated before the company broke ground on its new light aircraft factory in early 1995. Now, frustrated by the failure of engines planned for the new 206 Stationar and turbocharged T206 Turbo Stationair, Cessna has put off delivery of the six-seat workhorse by a year, to the start of 1999.
In fact, Cessna ran into the stone wall of reality in 1997 as the company returned to piston single production after an 11-year hiatus. A series of airworthiness directives provided evidence of the company's continuing struggle to restart its piston single line - learning curve, vendor performance and quality control in turn frustrated planned production-rate targets.
Consequently, deliveries of new piston singles lagged forecasts by about 60%, at just 360 aircraft instead of about 1,000. Cessna now expects to build about 800 172R Skyhawks and 182S Skylanes this year, about 40% of the 2,000 aircraft the company originally anticipated for the second full year of production.
Cessna may never catch up with its optimistic expectations - at least not in this century - but, after building no piston aircraft from 1986 through 1996, the company delivered 287 Skyhawks and 73 Skylanes in 1997.
PRIDE IN ACHIEVEMENT
Despite the "frustrations of the year", Cessna remains "...tremendously proud of what was accomplished and very excited about the future", says Phil Michel, vice-president of marketing and communications. "Bending metal is only one part of the equation that's important to us." Equally important, he says, are efforts to reverse shrinkage in the US pilot population and to revitalise flight schools, fixed base operators, service centres and sales outlets.
"Bending metal will get done," he says, "but we have to sustain our efforts across the board to rebuild the entry level of flying. The new people we attract today are the future buyers of [New Piper] Seneca Vs and [Cessna] CitationJets as they move beyond entry level aircraft."
Cessna chairman Russ Meyer set the target of 1,000 piston singles in 1997 and 2,000 in 1998 back in 1994, as the US Congress debated a bill to relieve manufacturers of liability for aircraft more than 18 years old. " If the chairman hadn't been out front with those numbers, I'm not sure we'd be where we are now," Michel says.
Cessna's numbers, based on its own market research, helped ignite a spark of optimism that spread into a flame of growth after Congress enacted the so called "statute of repose".
With companies buoyed by new legislation and Cessna's optimism about market potential, the US general aviation community launched a collective effort in 1996 to reverse a decade long decline in the US pilot population. Efforts by the GA Team 2000 coalition contributed to a near 10% increase in student starts in 1997.
Cessna's next step comes in late May, when the new computer-based training programme, developed by King Schools in San Diego, heads for classrooms at more than 400 franchised Cessna Pilot Centers.
The manufacturer is pleased with the market's response to its three singles. Virtually every Skylane scheduled for production this year is spoken for, either by individuals or dealers in Cessna's STAR network. The same applies for every Skyhawk to August and every Stationair that would have been built in 1998 - with the recent delay, that means all of 1999's 206 and T206 production is already sold out.
"From our perspective, we're very pleased with how the year went - not that we couldn't have done without the frustrations," says Michel. "It's so much more comforting than the frustration of having it the other way around - that we can build them, but can't sell them."
Aside from a few weeks' slippage in delivery of the first 172R and 182S, Cessna stayed close to hitting dates announced in 1994, when Meyer confirmed that Cessna was returning to piston aircraft production.
FACTORY CONSTRUCTION
Construction of the new Independence, Kansas, factory began in the second quarter of 1995 and the plant officially opened on 4 July, 1996, but it was after the first 172R was delivered in mid-January 1997 that the rough spots emerged on Cessna's road to revitalisation.
The first US Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directive (AD) came in June 1997, by which time fewer than 80 Skyhawks had been delivered. That emergency AD, to correct a potentially dangerous clearance problem on the engine cowling, would not be the last.
It was something unforeseen - too little clearance between the exhaust pipe and the gascolator drainpipe and their corresponding openings in the engine cowl. The problem surfaced during a June delivery flight to Europe, when the pilot turned back, alarmed by the Skyhawk's abnormally high fuel consumption. The tanks ran dry and the engine stopped just short of the runway at St Johns, Newfoundland. The pilot successfully executed a dead-stick landing.
An examination of the aircraft found the clearance problem. It is believed that, on startup, the engine rocked on its mounts enough to bring the tailpipe into contact with the cowling. The cowling then moved on its shock-absorbing mounts enough to shear off the gascolator drain, allowing fuel to pour from the valve.
Another AD was proposed after a worker noticed rivets missing from the forward door-post structure. Cessna convinced the FAA that the missing rivets threatened the aircraft's life span, but not its airworthiness. The agency settled on a mandatory service bulletin requiring a repetitive, 14 man hour, inspection of the door posts of new Skyhawks and Skylanes, with fitting the missing rivets as a terminating action.
This was followed by broken seat-frame welds on the 172. Problems with suppliers and with production quality control continued to plague Cessna's new single-engine plant.
Then, in September 1997, a visit by an FAA inspector turned up more quality control problems. The inspector requested engineering data and assembly information, but factory staff could not answer the questions. Cessna agreed to suspend deliveries for about two weeks until an FAA audit helped clear up the shortcomings. Production continued, albeit at a snail's pace.
Deliveries resumed, but the problems were not over. Next came ADs for defective exhaust silencers on the Skyhawk and Skylane, and an AD directed at correcting a snag with the alternate static-source system in both models. The pilot ferrying a 182S had found the tailpipe on one side broken at a weld. Factory inspectors checking other tailpipes discovered the leaking silencers.
As Cessna entered a two week holiday for Christmas and New Year, emergency employees started working on the three ADs, two ordering replacement of Skyhawk and Skylane silencers and prohibiting heater use until the work is accomplished, and the third making mandatory the rework of the alternate static-source control. The latter prohibits instrument flight-rules operation until the work is done.
Some of these problems can be traced back to Cessna - the gascolator clearance problem (engineering), missing door-post rivets (production and quality control) and the alternate static-source problem (engineering, production and quality control) - but not all. Supplier Aeroquip took the hit for the leaking silencers since it was that company's poor quality control that let the leakers slip through.
The 206 engine problem was outside Cessna's control. The setback for the Stationair programme falls firmly in the lap of exclusive engine supplier Textron Lycoming. The hitch emerged because the new engines planned for the Stationair and Turbo Stationair did not meet reliability targets. Lycoming designed the new IO-580 and turbocharged TIO-580 specifically to produce full rated power at lower engine speed than the 2,700RPM maximum on powerplants previously used on the 206. For the 172R and 182S, Cessna had moved to larger-displacement Lycoming engines rated at typical Skyhawk and Skylane power levels, but with a reduced redline speed of 2,400RPM.
The IO-580 was designed to produce maximum power at 2,400RPM, and used new, larger-diameter, cylinders, but could not pass the engine maker's 500h endurance test. Privately, Cessna staffers also acknowledge that the engine was suffering teething problems in flight testing. So the company dropped back to an older Lycoming engine for the 206 and T206.
DELIVERY DELAYS
Deliveries, due to begin early 1998, will not now start until the end of the year. That means the scores of customers booked for 1998 must wait another year. The delay also means another year in which Cessna will not make as many aircraft as earlier predicted, even if it sells as many Skyhawks and Skylanes as expected.
As Cessna executives point out, some of the troubles were self-generated. "We simply underestimated the challenges of bringing on line a new facility from a green field," Cessna says, a reference to the two-year process of re-establishing piston production.
"There is much we did that went according to plan," Cessna says, "and there were some unfortunate, unforeseen, problems that vexed us, as well." Among the unforeseen from Michel's perspective were the challenges of hiring and training nearly 1,000 people in a short time.
For now, Cessna's plans are to focus on its current commitments: on correcting production problems; sustainably achieving production-rate targets; and maintaining a production backlog of six months or so on the 172R, and of up to a year on the 182S and two 206 models.
Michel explains: "For us to sustain production of any future new designs, we have to get things right with the aircraft we're committed to now." Production of the Skyhawk remains at two daily; Skylane production is about one a day, well off the two a day target of 1997.
If Cessna's single engine team succeeds in advancing to 1998 targets, production rates are expected to increase by at least 50% in 1999 - if not by 100%, to about 1,800-2,000 for the year.
"We're about a year off from where we planned to be, and we're selling more than we can build right now," Michel says.
Source: Flight International
