Alan and Dale Klapmeier, the brothers who co-founded Cirrus Design in the mid-1980s, are among six people who will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, next year.
The other individuals honored by the Hall of Fame include Emily Warner, who flew for Frontier Airlines in the 1970s; the late Steve Wittman, an air racer and aircraft designer for which the airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is named; Bert Acosta, an early test pilot; and USAF Brig. Gen. James McDivitt, whose career spanned the Korean War and the Apollo space program.
The Hall of Fame revealed the list of names at a dinner in Dayton on Tuesday to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A black-tie dinner and ceremony to honor the inductees will be held in Dayton next October.
The Klapmeier brothers are no longer business partners, the elder brother Alan having moved on to become the CEO of Kestrel Aircraft, a company that is working to produce an 8-seat single-engine turboprop powered by a 1,000 shp Honeywell TPE331-14GR engine. Dale Klapmeier remains CEO of Cirrus Aircraft based in Duluth, Minnesota.
The Klapmeier brothers were also included in our list of “51 Heroes of Aviation” earlier this year. Check out the list here.
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