Flight Design Has New Owner

Flight Design, the German company that makes the CT-line of light sport aircraft, has been through the wringer in recent years with a series of reversals that no one could have anticipated. Its parent company entered insolvency in 2016 and was operated at a low level of activity by a receiver company, but the company was able to maintain the planes' S-LSA certification and was able to make few planes and parts, as well.

All the while, Flight Design's principals were looking for new options for manufacturing the CT and obtaining financing for its production, but the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea and fighting in eastern Ukraine, where much of Flight Design's manufacturing is done, made it hard,Flight Design USA president Tom Peghiny said, for the company to get funding. So the announcement on Thursday of the German investment group LIFT Holding's purchase of the company's assets comes as a welcome development for Flight Design.

Courtesy of Flight Design

The new company will be known as Flight Design General Aviation, GmbH. It will assume all the assets of the former company and plans to produce the CT lineup. In an email, Peghiny told Plane & Pilot that his group has been in discussions with LIFT for the past year and that the new agreement will allow for retaining the engineering team, which Peghiny said had "deep product knowledge," and he added that the agreement would keep the quality assurance and safety expertise of the company intact.

Additionally, the agreement will allow Flight Design to immediately improve its spare parts inventory and product support. It will continue to produce assemblies in Ukraine, with a licensed operation producing CT aircraft in China, as well.

The new company also plans to continue its development of the C4 four-place sport plane, the program for which Peghiny said would change to accommodate the efficiencies in a changing certification landscape in the United States and abroad.

Learn more at Flight Design.

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Isabel GoyerWriter

A commercial pilot, editor-in-Chief Isabel Goyer has been flying for more than 40 years, with hundreds of different aircraft in her logbook and thousands of hours. An award-winning aviation writer, photographer and editor, Ms. Goyer led teams at Sport Pilot, Air Progress and Flying before coming to Plane & Pilot in 2015.