VISIONAIRE HOPES to hear by July whether the Israeli Government has accepted its proposal to produce the Vantage single-turbofan business aircraft in that country.
The St Louis, Missouri-based company has applied for "approved-enterprise" status, under which the Israeli Government would provide up to two-thirds of the $25 million needed to establish a Vantage production line in Arad, south of Jerusalem.
The proposal has been submitted on behalf of VisionArad, a joint-venture company formed with Israeli partners. The company is planning to build a duplicate of the Ames, Iowa, final-assembly plant, for which VisionAire is in the final stages of arranging financing. Each plant will have the capacity to produce 115 Vantages a year.
The Arad factory is planned to be operational 18 months after the Ames plant, to produce Vantages for the Asia-Pacific, European and Middle Eastern markets. Initial deliveries from the Ames factory are scheduled to begin in 1999, following US certification. The company holds 59 firm orders for the $1.65 million aircraft, Ìve from customers outside the USA.
VisionAire says that it has been required to demonstrate to the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade's Investment Centre that it can raise the matching funds required to qualify for the grants and low-interest loans available under the approved-enterprise programme. The company hopes to raise at least some of the money from among the Jewish-American community in St Louis.
VisionAire is still raising funding for US certification and production of the all-composite aircraft. Financing so far has been provided by some 300 private investors, many from the Ames area, where the final-assembly plant will be located. Scaled Composites, which helped design the Vantage and built the proof-of-concept (PoC) aircraft which were entered into a flight-testing programme in November 1996, is to build the airframes in Montrose, Colorado.
High-speed flight testing of the PoC Vantage has begun, following the activation of the landing-gear retraction system in March. The aircraft has achieved an altitude of 35,000ft (10,700m) and speeds in excess of 350kt (650km/h), and will ultimately be approved for operation at up to 41,000ft.
Source: Flight International
