Yingling hopes its remanufactured planes help pilot ranks grow (+video)

Yingling Aviation is getting into the airplane manufacturing business – sort of.

The fixed-base operator at Wichita Eisenhower National Airport will begin producing the Ascend 172, which is a completely restored, or remanufactured, pre-owned Cessna 172 airplane.

Lynn Nichols, Yingling owner and CEO, announced the company’s Ascend airplane Monday at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s booth at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wis.

Nichols told The Eagle that his company has built two of the Ascend airplanes and is working on a third.

He said that while the Ascend is a business opportunity for Yingling, there’s also altruistic reasons behind the airplane. The rising costs of airplanes and flight training, he thinks, have impeded people from learning to fly.

He thinks the Ascend’s starting price of $159,900 – compared with more than $400,000 for an equivalent new airplane – will be attractive to flight schools and flight clubs, which provide the aircraft students fly and are paid for through hourly rental fees.

Nichols and AOPA officials think the flight schools and flying clubs that buy the airplanes will, in turn, pass along their cost savings by lowering their rental fees, ultimately making it more affordable for people to earn a private pilot’s license.

“This airplane furthers the concept of AOPA’s Reimagined Aircraft program, designed to make the most of the existing aircraft fleet while making general aviation accessible to more people,” AOPA president Mark Baker said in a news release.

It establishes a “path to make sure people who want to fly can afford to fly,” Nichols said. “We need to do this for the well-being of our industry.”

According to Federal Aviation Administration data, the number of private pilots has shrunk nearly 24 percent in the past 10 years. In 2005, the FAA said there were 228,619 private pilots in the U.S. In 2014, the number was 174,883.

Nichols said the idea for the Ascend came in part from a meeting about a year ago with the AOPA’s Baker to discuss concerns about a lack of student pilots and the cost of flying and flight training.

Nichols said from that discussion came the idea of taking older Cessna 172s and doing a frame-up restoration of the airplane, including conducting thorough inspections throughout the process, fixing any corrosion, replacing old parts with new and overhauling the engine.

He said the process Yingling is using to remanufacture the 172s was developed from its work upgrading FedEx’s fleet of Cessna 208 Caravans, a contract Yingling won in 2010, and included work on about 250 of the single-engine turboprop airplanes.

Yingling selected the 172 because more than 40,000 have been manufactured over the years and its nearly 70 years as a Cessna parts dealer. Yingling is targeting 172s made between 1977 and 1982 to keep its costs – and the Ascend’s price – low.

“We feel like there’s enough in the marketplace … that we can run through the process and keep the price where it needs to be.”

Yingling has hired one new employee as part of the Ascend program but has not yet added any others. Yingling employs about 100 people.

“We anticipate adding jobs at Yingling, but I can’t give you a definite number yet,” Nichols said, adding that it depends on the number of orders it takes for the Ascend.

“We feel … it will be met with great review,” he said.

This story was originally published July 20, 2015 at 7:01 AM with the headline "Yingling hopes its remanufactured planes help pilot ranks grow (+video)."