'Birthday Present' For Company
It's
a big step for the company aiming to reintroduce a storied aircraft
name to the US market. Commander Premier Aircraft (CPAC) has been
awarded Parts Manufacturer Approval by the FAA.
Joel M. Hartsone, CPAC President and CEO, said, "This is an
enormously important milestone for CPAC. It's like a birthday. With
this grant, CPAC begins life as an FAA regulated manufacturing
company."
The company tells ANN it will start accepting orders for new
Commanders within two months. Each new aircraft will take about
five weeks to build. The last new Commander rolled out in 2002.
The Commander 115 aircraft to be produced at the Cape Girardeau
plant are already fully certified by the FAA, and the company has
all equipment necessary for full scale production. This grant gives
CPAC authority from the FAA to certify parts for installation and
use in Commander aircraft under its own quality assurance
program.
"Putting things in the sky is serious business," Hartstone said.
"Our senior management team and our directors are all pilots. We
take aviation safety very seriously."
Commander parts will initially be made by subcontractors,
according to Carl Gull, CPAC Vice President of Operations.
"Our subcontractors produce parts for Commanders using our design
specifications and fitting our molds and other tooling to their
machines," he said.
Under applicable FAA regulations, CPAC is responsible for the
quality of parts made by subcontractors as fully as if the parts
were made in their own factory.
"The quality assurance program is based on a very technical,
very precisely written manual. It's not sufficient to be
understood; you have to be insusceptible of being misunderstood.
That's how you prove you're doing everything the way you said you
were," Hartstone said.
When production is fully operational, the company hopes employ
at least 40 people and "eventually" increase that number to 60.
Hartstone said he receives inquiries from people interested in
buying a new plane "virtually every day." He hopes the
deliberate slowness is reassuring to future passengers and aircraft
owners.
"We do things very methodically one step at a time," he said.
"We want to make sure we're on solid footing with what we've done
before we take the next step."
"By first seeking PMA, CPAC can establish a full part sales
operation... to support existing and new Commander fleet," said
Hartstone, adding CPAC is now "more confident" in its ability to
produce new Commander 115 aircraft later this year as a result of
the designation.
CPAC was formed by a group of 50 Aero Commander owners who
bought the company in bankruptcy proceedings. No new
Aero-Commanders have been built since the original company filed
for Chapter 7 in 2002
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