There is new evidence that when Cessna Aircraft CEO Scott Ernest said at the NBAA Convention in October that the Skycatcher has “no future,” he meant it. While no official word has come out of Wichita, Cessna has removed all traces of the LSA from the single-engine product line on its website, seemingly moving the Skycatcher program to the history books. Cessna did not immediately reply to our requests for comment.
Assuming the program is indeed done, it’s a quiet demise for Cessna’s lightest airplane after a troubled history. The Skycatcher was plagued with challenges from the start. The light sport model’s tail design had to be revised after a prototype spun and crashed late in the development phase. There was negative reaction from the flying public after the Wichita, Kansas-based company announced it would produce the Skycatcher in China.
Then, in 2012, safety alert SA162-57-01R1 was released as a result of wing spar cracking, requiring mandatory spar improvements and the removal and replacement of a section of the leading-edge wing skin with segments containing new inspection access panels. Cessna covered the cost of the work, provided it was completed at an authorized service center within one year of the publication of service bulletin SB12-57-01.
Another unpopular announcement was the increased price of the LSA, which Cessna had originally hoped to deliver for under $110,000 in 2007 dollars. That figure skyrocketed to $149,900 at the start of 2012.
These challenges combined to reverse the flow of excitement Cessna created when it first announced the Skycatcher program at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2007. People lined up at the booth to place their orders for the airplane and the company quickly secured several hundred deposits for the new LSA. Cessna had planned to ramp up production to 700 airplanes per year. However, four years after the first Skycatcher was delivered in December 2009, only about 200 Skycatchers have been delivered.
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