Future of Mooney: Speculation thread

[EricJ]

7 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

Mooney lost the turboprop mojo with the TBM line, so they have nothing to offer there. Today, it is a crowded market with two successful, entrenched manufacturers (TBM, Pilatus) and two new ones (Epic, Textron Denali on the way) so only a fool would enter that space now. And it remains to be seen if Textron is that fool.

In the "what could have been" dept., those TBM sales could have been Mooney, but it didn't pan out that way.

 

7 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

The J/K tooling was destroyed, so they can't offer new production kits easily without building new tools.

I keep hearing this, but the fuselage is the one thing that they did seem to not be afraid of making significant changes on.    So shortening it back to J dimensions doesn't seem like it would have been too big of a deal.   Is the wing that much different now than it was?    The gear hasn't changed much, the empennage doesn't seem much different.   

[afward]

4 hours ago, RobertGary1 said:

I think the difference is that you can buy a number of new single engine planes that basically meet the same mission objective as a Mooney. There really is no substitute for the DC-3 on the market today.

-Robert

I'll do ya one better: There's nothing on the market that competes with a Basler BT-67.

Anyway, the idea is that there is a model out there for taking old airframes and getting the effectively recertified as new.  That would reduce the cost by a fair margin, though how much is anyone's guess...

[Austintatious]

2 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

Well, the M10 never had a "line" as it was a failure long before it got to production.

Mooney lost the turboprop mojo with the TBM line, so they have nothing to offer there. Today, it is a crowded market with two successful, entrenched manufacturers (TBM, Pilatus) and two new ones (Epic, Textron Denali on the way) so only a fool would enter that space now. And it remains to be seen if Textron is that fool.

The J/K tooling was destroyed, so they can't offer new production kits easily without building new tools.

So as I concluded, from your list of possibilities the only one that doesn't seem like a bad idea is moving towards electric propulsion. To most of us, it sounds ridiculous. I was of the same opinion until a couple of years ago. There has been around 1.5 Billion invested in this arena so far, and there are over 150 eVTOL developments going right now, including major established companies like Bell, Boeing, and Airbus. It's coming. Pipistrel and Bye have electric planes flying right now. They can't replace a Mooney for XC trips today, but they might soon. Mooney obviously doesn't have money to fund real advanced research in this arena, but if they had succeeded in spinning up a composite M10 production line, they could've had a LOT to offer some entity with a good design a way to get a production vehicle into the market... But that ship has sailed.

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Ok, Ill try to make this short.

Electric tech is no where near being able to provide a meaningful X-C platform.  Yes, Pipestrel has an electric aircraft... it is barely good enough to be a training platform and even then to get a PP certificate you will be forced into a piston aircraft to meet the XC requirements.  It has an 80 mile range for 2 people with almost no baggage space.  have you ever flown a Pipestrel?  I have and it was the most uncomfortable aircraft I have ever flown ( And I own a glider!).

I have heard rumors of  Lithium Co2 batteries that supposedly hold 7x the power of current batteries.  Though I am not certain I am convinced this is a reality.  However even if it were, that still would not be enough to make an electric Mooney viable.  Look at the math, it does not add up.  100LL has an energy density of 44.0 MJ/KG ... Current Li batteries have 0.875 MJ/kg  even if we get them to 7x as much,  that is still only 6.125 MJ/KG.  Which is 1/7th the amount of 100LL.   Physics dont magically change when you go electric.  It still takes X energy to move the aircraft through the air at Y speed for Z distance.  Fill your tanks to 1/7th capacity and see how much use you can get out of your aircraft.  Then keep in mind that the 7x capacity I have granted you does not exist and divide how far you can go by another 7.  Then keep in mind it will take you an hour to re-charge the batteries and that You will carry 100% of their weight 100% of the time.

Electric VTOL  right now the same as the flying cars of the 80's.... great at 1 thing... soaking investors for money for something that is way beyond our horizons.  The problems are so numerous I could go on for way too long for this thread.

[KSMooniac]

It wouldn't be impossible to make mid body Mooneys again, but as debated ad nauseum, they would only cost a few thousand less to build versus an Ovation or Acclaim. Very marginally less raw material, a few less rivets, engine and prop that only cost 10-15k less than the 550's... You get the idea. So a J or K at 750000 vs 800k or whatever won't sell. At the stratospheric prices we have today, buyers opt for loaded and more powerful... That's why the J and K went out of production 20 years ago. That's why the Eagle didn't sell well. That's why the stripped-down J models didn't sell well. It's just where we are, and no amount of wishing that a new J be made and sold for half the price of an Ovation will make it possible.

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[afward]

1 hour ago, kortopates said:

The Meijing group is private business, not even sure its owner, Veronica, even goes by a CEO title, she was always introduced to me as Owner or Head of Meijing group when I was over there. I think you're confusing Dr Jerry Chen, whom she hired to run Soaring at Chino initially to develop the M10 and provide the 10 year vision business plan. He left Soaring a few years ago; yet rumored to be providing consulting services to her. But fundamentally she knows very little about aviation. But she's am incredibly talented young woman that became a billionaire in her 40's in real estate development and is now diversifying into other businesses including healthcare here in the US.  But as Paul said, Mooney international didn't need to be profitable for her to be successful. She just needed a solid and very well respected brand name that the Chinese people would trust. She also needed an economical trainer that could thrive in China to enable her to get into the expected explosion of GA training  coming soon - hence the diesel M10 project (avgas is hard to obtain in China). Her future profits where expected to be in China yet with a long term vision that was going to take time.  There wasn't even confidence in the Kerrville team to build a new design composite trainer so a new team was developed under Jerry to design and take it through certification.  When that fell through, many of the Chino team went on to Kerrville. I lost touch by then but assume the Chino talent took a big role in the new developments we've seen in the recent M20 refinements.   

Dr. Chen was introduced in a few places as being the CEO of Meijing Group at the time of the acquisition.  That's all I was working with.  I don't think I ever knew anything about the real ownership (though I might've been a little misled by the inaccurate reporting into thinking he had more control of the money than he really did).  Thanks for the clarification and details.

[Volzalum]

What would really interest me would be:

1) Keep Retractable

2) More space

3) Diesel/Jet-A burning Engine

4) No Speed loss

5) Allowance for Both FIKI and AC

6) 4 passenger with 200 lbs baggage with Full Fuel payload

7) Option for a BRS (not a standard included item but available if desired)

8) Price <600K

The new retractable DA-50 *may* check off some of these boxes when they release their specs but will probably cost double (or more) the number 8.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Volzalum

[PJClark]

Well, I preface with "what do I know".. . But I do run a $50+ million a year business so FWIW.

 It seems to me that Mooney has a competition problem. Cirrus.  In that head to head battle, at virtually the same price point around $800k, Mooney is just outgunned. I think it's sexier. I think an airplane should have retractable gear. And I like FAST. Those three things are what Mooney has going for it. But Cirrus has everything else. Parachute. "Fast enough"--even if it's 20 knots slower, on most trips in real time it doesn't matter. Bigger feeling cabin.  More Useful Load even with FIKI and/or AC.  And don't forget...The parachute.

I think what we see is the market segment willing to toss out all those advantages for an $800k new airplane is....small if it's advantages are 20 knots and sexy.  4 Acclaims in a year small. That's not a business, it's a cult following, and it won't pay the bills.  It didn't.

I think the right track starts with  a variation on the "refurb old airplanes."  Instead, build new ones that are irresistably priced.  $100k for an engine.  $100k for an airframe.  $100k for avionics...but don't do dumb G1000 stuff --folks are wise to their $100k being orphaned by Moor's law.  put in dual G500TXi s or dual G3Xs or even Dual Dynon's...make it an option. mark it up enough to pay the bills and hold some reserves..and figure out how to sell a beautiful, new, very fast, sexy airplane for $500k or less. Not $800k. Not without a parachute and all the advantages Cirrus has. Not enough wives will go for it. As one of my Saudi friends frequently says:  "The Ministry of the Interior is dual-hatted as the Ministry of Finance". For $850k the MoF wants a parachute, and she can and will have one.

I think what Mooney's proved at least 3 times now is that going head to head selling airplanes at the same price point as Cirrus is not gonna work.  You know the definition of insanity.  Time to do something different. Go where the competition ain't!

probably too hard to do, and maybe Mooney is gone forever without a real visionary with very deep pockets.

nickel on the grass.

 

[KSMooniac]

Ok, Ill try to make this short.
Electric tech is no where near being able to provide a meaningful X-C platform.  Yes, Pipestrel has an electric aircraft... it is barely good enough to be a training platform and even then to get a PP certificate you will be forced into a piston aircraft to meet the XC requirements.  It has an 80 mile range for 2 people with almost no baggage space.  have you ever flown a Pipestrel?  I have and it was the most uncomfortable aircraft I have ever flown ( And I own a glider!).
I have heard rumors of  Lithium Co2 batteries that supposedly hold 7x the power of current batteries.  Though I am not certain I am convinced this is a reality.  However even if it were, that still would not be enough to make an electric Mooney viable.  Look at the math, it does not add up.  100LL has an energy density of 44.0 MJ/KG ... Current Li batteries have 0.875 MJ/kg  even if we get them to 7x as much,  that is still only 6.125 MJ/KG.  Which is 1/7th the amount of 100LL.   Physics dont magically change when you go electric.  It still takes X energy to move the aircraft through the air at Y speed for Z distance.  Fill your tanks to 1/7th capacity and see how much use you can get out of your aircraft.  Then keep in mind that the 7x capacity I have granted you does not exist and divide how far you can go by another 7.  Then keep in mind it will take you an hour to re-charge the batteries and that You will carry 100% of their weight 100% of the time.
Electric VTOL  right now the same as the flying cars of the 80's.... great at 1 thing... soaking investors for money for something that is way beyond our horizons.  The problems are so numerous I could go on for way too long for this thread.

You're not wrong. Today's batteries don't enable a propulsion system that can do what our Mooneys do. In the near term, an electric motor, small battery set, and gas powered generator might be. Or with a fuel cell. The activity and money working in the space now far exceeds anything that has previously happened on the fringe of the aviation world. Nobody can say with certainty that there won't be breakthroughs.

In the meantime, I'm happily flying my efficient speedster all over the country burning dino juice and don't expect to replace it anytime in the next decade...

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[Austintatious]

2 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

You're not wrong. Today's batteries don't enable a propulsion system that can do what our Mooneys do. In the near term, an electric motor, small battery set, and gas powered generator might be. Or with a fuel cell. The activity and money working in the space now far exceeds anything that has previously happened on the fringe of the aviation world. Nobody can say with certainty that there won't be breakthroughs.

In the meantime, I'm happily flying my efficient speedster all over the country burning dino juice and don't expect to replace it anytime in the next decade...

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The gas generator is a terrible idea as well... If you are going to have a gasoline engine powering your ship, you are best off to ahve it do so directly instead of incurring the efficiency looses of the IC engine to the generator to the electric motor to the prop.  Just have the Engine drive the prop directly and cut out 2 points of lost efficiency.

 

Hybrid vehicles make sense on the ground in stop and go conditions.  We have a hybrid and it gets great economy in the city...on road trips, there is no gain.

[KSMooniac]

Dr. Chen was introduced in a few places as being the CEO of Meijing Group at the time of the acquisition.  That's all I was working with.  I don't think I ever knew anything about the real ownership (though I might've been a little misled by the inaccurate reporting into thinking he had more control of the money than he really did).  Thanks for the clarification and details.

Dr Chen had the vision to pick up the ashes of Mooney and revitalize the brand. He put together a plan and went shopping for investors. The way I heard it, he drew up a list of 10 or 15 candidates, and got told NO one by one until the current owner said yes. I'll always give him tremendous credit for that vision and willingness to start the process that extended the life of Mooney a bit longer.

IMO, he failed with the initial design of the M10 and crazy/unrealistic development schedule. He didn't have a great leadership team. I firmly believe the M10 concept was a great idea, but terribly executed. In an alternate universe, we might see Mooney building 300-500 M10's a year right now, and development of the M20 replacement well underway, completely funded from M10 sales.

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[ryoder]

Mooney becomes an uber MSC.

[afward]

32 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

Dr Chen had the vision to pick up the ashes of Mooney and revitalize the brand. He put together a plan and went shopping for investors. The way I heard it, he drew up a list of 10 or 15 candidates, and got told NO one by one until the current owner said yes. I'll always give him tremendous credit for that vision and willingness to start the process that extended the life of Mooney a bit longer.

IMO, he failed with the initial design of the M10 and crazy/unrealistic development schedule. He didn't have a great leadership team. I firmly believe the M10 concept was a great idea, but terribly executed. In an alternate universe, we might see Mooney building 300-500 M10's a year right now, and development of the M20 replacement well underway, completely funded from M10 sales.

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OK, that all makes a lot more sense than what I'd previously thought.  The (erroneous) thing about him being CEO of Meijing Group completely threw me off track.

So I would agree the M10 was the right idea at the right time.  I do wonder why it went so far off the rails...  Seems like the initial design team made some rookie mistakes.

[toto]

3 minutes ago, afward said:

  the M10 was the right idea at the right time.  I do wonder why it went so far off the rails...  Seems like the initial design team made some rookie mistakes.

Is the M10 bridge fully burned? Any path forward to a restart?

[Ron McBride]

1 hour ago, KSMooniac said:

Well, the M10 never had a "line" as it was a failure long before it got to production.

Mooney lost the turboprop mojo with the TBM line, so they have nothing to offer there. Today, it is a crowded market with two successful, entrenched manufacturers (TBM, Pilatus) and two new ones (Epic, Textron Denali on the way) so only a fool would enter that space now. And it remains to be seen if Textron is that fool.

The J/K tooling was destroyed, so they can't offer new production kits easily without building new tools.

So as I concluded, from your list of possibilities the only one that doesn't seem like a bad idea is moving towards electric propulsion. To most of us, it sounds ridiculous. I was of the same opinion until a couple of years ago. There has been around 1.5 Billion invested in this arena so far, and there are over 150 eVTOL developments going right now, including major established companies like Bell, Boeing, and Airbus. It's coming. Pipistrel and Bye have electric planes flying right now. They can't replace a Mooney for XC trips today, but they might soon. Mooney obviously doesn't have money to fund real advanced research in this arena, but if they had succeeded in spinning up a composite M10 production line, they could've had a LOT to offer some entity with a good design a way to get a production vehicle into the market... But that ship has sailed.

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What tooling?  The wing and baggage compartment back are the same or minor changes, build a new cage, 2 doors and some skins, firewall etc.  

 

[pwnel]

48 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

IMO, he failed with the initial design of the M10 and crazy/unrealistic development schedule. He didn't have a great leadership team. I firmly believe the M10 concept was a great idea, but terribly executed. In an alternate universe, we might see Mooney building 300-500 M10's a year right now, and development of the M20 replacement well underway, completely funded from M10 sales.

For those of us newer to the Mooney family - what was the big failing of the M10?  Diesel composite trainer seems to make all the sense in the world.  Pictures looks nice etc.  

PS: come to think of it - what ultimately was the failure of the Skycatcher?  Sure I heard it was crappy but thats still opinions.  Facts? 

Edited November 15, 2019 by pwnel

[KSMooniac]

Is the M10 bridge fully burned? Any path forward to a restart?

No. The tools were recycled. It didn't fly well and was hundreds of pounds overweight... So it would need to be redesigned completely.

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[KSMooniac]

For those of us newer to the Mooney family - what was the big failing of the M10?  Diesel composite trainer seems to make all the sense in the world.  Pictures looks nice etc.  
PS: come to think of it - what ultimately was the failure of the Skycatcher?  Sure I heard it was crappy but thats still opinions.  Facts? 

Great idea, looked ok/good, but didn't perform well.

Skycatcher had similar failings with the added constraint of trying to squeeze into the LSA class with a low weight limit. I've heard it flew fine, but seemed fragile and not up to flight school duty. Textron sent production overseas and I believe had lots of issues from that decision, and at the end of the day they couldn't make money on it so they were scrapped.

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[pwnel]

I guess if you're ultimately selling a sleek, smallish, fast machine focusing mostly on a market (the US) that is at heart a Ford F150-driving 5l V8-engine loving culture you won't get far.  The European LSA market running Rotax seems to be just fine along with Diamond, Tecnam etc.

Edited November 15, 2019 by pwnel

[MooneyMitch]

1 hour ago, EricJ said:

The J/K tooling was destroyed, so they can't offer new production kits easily without building new tools.

Myth.   This was confirmed by longtime Mooney factory folks while filming Boots movie.

The mid-body steel cage was simply modified by adding some tubing length and adjusting some cross members.  

All tubing length jigs (J, K, M, R, etc.) are marked and hanging on the wall where the cage is fabricated and welded.

[EricJ]

1 minute ago, MooneyMitch said:

Myth.   This was confirmed by longtime Mooney factory folks while filming Boots movie.

The mid-body steel cage was simply modified by adding some tubing length and adjusting some cross members.  

All tubing length jigs (J, K, M, R, etc.) are marked and hanging on the wall where the cage is fabricated and welded.

Not sure how the part you quoted got attributed to me.    I was challenging it as well.

[exM20K]

1 hour ago, pwnel said:

For those of us newer to the Mooney family - what was the big failing of the M10?  Diesel composite trainer seems to make all the sense in the world.  Pictures looks nice etc.  

PS: come to think of it - what ultimately was the failure of the Skycatcher?  Sure I heard it was crappy but thats still opinions.  Facts? 

M10 did nothing better than a DA20 in the high utilization FTO/pro pilot fleet world. The total version is jiggy with car gas for world markets.

Edited November 15, 2019 by exM20K

[KSMooniac]

Myth.   This was confirmed by longtime Mooney factory folks while filming Boots movie.
The mid-body steel cage was simply modified by adding some tubing length and adjusting some cross members.  
All tubing length jigs (J, K, M, R, etc.) are marked and hanging on the wall where the cage is fabricated and welded.

You can't get fuselage skins for the mid bodies. I know where the last NOS upper cabin skin went...

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[MooneyMitch]

5 minutes ago, EricJ said:

Not sure how the part you quoted got attributed to me.    I was challenging it as well.

Whoops, my error.  I copied and pasted out of your post.  

The verbiage was originally from KSMooniac.

I apologize Eric .

[EricJ]

1 minute ago, MooneyMitch said:

Whoops, my error.  I copied and pasted out of your post.  

The verbiage was originally from KSMooniac.

I apologize Eric .

No problem and no apologies necessary!   It just seemed a little unusual.   Figured it was a technical glitch.

 

[afward]

48 minutes ago, KSMooniac said:

Great idea, looked ok/good, but didn't perform well.

Skycatcher had similar failings with the added constraint of trying to squeeze into the LSA class with a low weight limit. I've heard it flew fine, but seemed fragile and not up to flight school duty. Textron sent production overseas and I believe had lots of issues from that decision, and at the end of the day they couldn't make money on it so they were scrapped.

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I believe I recall that the competition all had a substantially lower empty weight (something like 100 pounds difference), so the performance of the C162 wasn't good enough to really compete.