Kestrel Aircraft’s CEO and president Alan Klapmeier and the company’s COO and executive vice president of product development Steve Serfling provided an update to the media on the Kestrel single-engine turboprop project in a press conference at AirVenture. Klapmeier said he had hoped to be able to announce full funding for the Kestrel turboprop program at the show, a program he said requires approximately $175 million, but some promising deals that he had hoped to close last week did not come through.
Klapmeier said the schedule for first delivery is likely to slip from 2015 to 2016. “A year from now, assuming that the funding happens, we should have a conforming prototype,” Klapmeier said. While the lack of funding may be holding back the progress of the program, Serfling said 85 percent of the suppliers for the airplane are now under contract.
