Now that it’s winding down, we can say it definitively: 2019 had some blockbuster stories, the top ten of which we’ve recognized here. As is always the case in aviation, where nothing except the planes themselves go very fast, many of the stories are high, or low, points in long-running tales while others are encapsulations of movements that have been hinted at before and that arrived fully formed in the past year. All of them, it’s safe to say, have roots in the past along and will surely continue to affect GA, some of them for years or decades to come.
6. Mooney's Woes
In retrospect, when one looked at the anemic sales figures for Mooney over the past several years, the writing was on the wall, but it still served as a real shock when the company quietly furloughed nearly its entire workforce. The company, which has contracted its operations over recent years and shut down its headquarters in California, recalled its workers a couple of weeks later, but answers to how Mooney finds its way forward remain.