There are now around 120 Columbias flying, of which more than 30 are Columbia 350s-the model replaces the Columbia 300 in Lancair's lineup. In 2003, the company delivered a total of 53 airplanes. It plans to deliver 140 Columbias in 2004 and 240 in 2005, with production growing to one a day by this fall.
A Kit HeritageWhile the Columbia is a certified airplane and has the papers to prove it, Lancair's kit heritage is unmistakable in the airplane's sleek lines. It doesn't look like a traditional single; it looks more like a Detroit concept car of an airplane. With its long legs, rounded forward fuselage and high-aspect ratio wings, the 350 is cool looking and then some.
It is, of course, the design descendent of Lancair's kitplanes. For many years before the company went into the certified airplane racket, Lancair, under the guidance of founder Lance Neibauer, made pretty kitplanes, fast ones, and always glass, too. Its early two-place all-composite 235 could cruise at around 170 knots behind a 115-hp Lycoming O-235 engine. The eventual evolution of Neibauer's design, the turbine-powered carbon-fiber, pressurized Lancair Prop Jet, can motor along at 27,000 feet at better than 330 knots.
That's impressive, but I'd argue that the numbers behind the Columbia 350 are even more remarkable because that airplane achieves its performance while also meeting strict FAA certification standards, standards that require it to, among many other things, stall at 61 knots or slower (57 knots is the number for the 350) and to handle well and predictably at very slow airspeeds. Speed is nice, we'd all agree, but speed without margins is no bargain in my book.
To meet the FAA's standards, Lancair gave the Columbia a wing with a discontinuous leading edge, to move the stall inboard. It also limited up-elevator travel and installed a rudder that is limited in left throw under power-on stall conditions. Like the Cirrus SR22, the Columbia didn't have to go through spin testing to satisfy the FAA. But unlike the Cirrus SR22, which was given credit for the ballistic whole-airplane parachute recovery system it packs, the Columbia 300 (and the 350) was certified as spin resistant, by demonstrating that it wouldn't enter a spin even with pro-spin controls held in by the pilot.
Not My Dad's New AirplaneOutwardly, there are not a lot of differences between the new 350 and its predecessor. Check out the panel, though, and you'll see why Lancair says that this is the airplane it wishes it could have built in the first place, had the requisite technologies been available at the time.
