After almost five years of quiet at the Mooney factory in Kerrville, Texas, the assembly line re-booted in February and the classic Acclaim Type S was back in production. The company has risen, yet again, thanks to a fresh infusion of cash from new investors, and new corporate leadership. The new Acclaim models will feature the TSIO-550-G turbo-normalized engine by Teledyne Continental Motors and an upgraded Garmin G1000 integrated avionics suite.
With no official public word from Cessna, the Skycatcher LSA appears to have been removed from the company website. According to AOPA, dealers were notified in late January that the aircraft is no longer in the fleet. The Skycatcher never achieved the kind of sales volume that Cessna had predicted, and market interest waned after a price hike from $114,000 to $149,000. When Skycatcher deliveries began in 2011, the company said it had more than 1,000 orders, but in the end, fewer than 200 were delivered.
