gallois wrote:
The problem for me will be how its purchase price will stand up against its competition such as the Robin401 with glass cockpit or a second hand Mooney, Cessna, Piper with modern avionics fit. Returning to marketing speak, however, the claimed €40 an hour (including fuel IIUC) running costs and its leasing type option is proving of interest within clubs.
As you say. My club is finding it increasingly difficult to motivate flying with 30-35 litres/hour spamcans – both from an economic and environmental perspective. Of course, going UL is the easy way out, but for various reasons we want to keep flying certified aircraft. (Some reasons are night VFR, IFR, the Voluntary Air Corps, attracting students who want to make a career in aviation, not being limited to two seats etc.)
When you fly a lot (our aircraft do about 300 hr/year) fixed costs such as financing get less important compared to operating costs.
I spoke to Elixir during Aero and sat in their planes. Definitely innovative (carbon one shot construction) and lots of little details (eg protruding metal hooks to protect G3X knobs during in/egress).
They are pursuing to offer an IFR capable version. No exact dates mentioned. No price yet, however my guess is it will be in line with the other two contenders:
Bristell 23 IFR and the already available Tecnam P Mentor. Something along 350-400k Euro.
@Snoopy wrote: Bristell 23 IFR and the already available Tecnam P Mentor. Something along 350-400k Euro.
And that could be the problem at that price you are also looking at competition from eg a seconhand DA42 or Tecnam P2006T or a Cirrus SR22 etc which offer 4 seats. As well as those listed by Snoopy.
So the choice might be running costs v more seats, more useful load, more engines, more power.
But if you can cut €100 per hour or more off running costs, training organisations might be able to make the PPL and the IR in all its variations, much more accessible and that can only be a good thing for GA in Europe.
True, though that Ryanair colored Tecnam Mentor „paints“ a different picture. Remember, the only thing that counts is training as cheap as possible. So reduce production costs but keep end user prices high. In other words, large puppy mill ATOs can finance a fleet of those new glas cockpit IFR rotax birds and then charge four seater prices for two seaters. I doubt any of these ab initio scams will become even a cent less for the student pilots. ATOs happy (cheaper production, more profit) and airlines happy (cheap desperate labor). The ryanair partner ato in poland is said to have trained 1500 pilots. Even at conservative estimates that 30+ million revenue. The lowcost airline made another 15 million off of those wannabes.
A benefit I could see for GA is some club ATOs could increase efficiency and lower costs if most training can be done on one type (LAPL, PPL, SE IR/CB IR) subsequently resulting in higher utilization.
I paid an short visit to the first club which owns an Elixir.
They are quite happy, the bird flew a lot since they received it in April 2022.
The plane is quite small. It is more the size of a UL than a Robin/Cessna.
For those who wondered (like me), the Trig radio on the RH panel is remote controlled by the G3X touch. No bending over for the pilot.
The odd thing I noticed is the fuel placards around the fuel caps. They read “SP95-E10 below FL120 / AVGAS 91 UL” and that’s it. No 100LL mentioned. This club runs 100% on mogas.
It is also the friendliest club I ever visited. Half a dozen young students were making crêpes (french pancakes) on a saturday at noon 
My current club at LFPN has a historic fleet of Robins.
It bought a P2002 10 years ago. They had planned to buy another one but became unhappy with it.
They now ordered 2 Elixir and plan to sell the P2002 and a Robin.
Elixir is really taking a market share on the training market from Robin, Tecnam etc…
As I went to the EASA website looking for something else, I saw the Elixir TCDS updated 2 days ago to now include Night VFR.
Nothing about the Rotax 915iS version though. Presume that and the IFR version might take some time.
From December’s Info-Pilote:
Earlier last year an Elixir aileron had a cellophane separator accidentally left between layers of carbon. This was notified to EASA, who grounded the fleet while it could be inspected for other occurences; the 20 aircraft in production were also checked by ultrasound. This added a 7 month delay to manufacturing.
Currently they have 70 aircraft ordered (none cancelled due to this issue), and a further 180 pre-ordered.
Incredible!
