LeSving wrote:
Well, any particular reason why you don’t study the only important part that really matters in this whole event? Nevertheless, you still feel knowledgeable enough to comment on it, hmm.
Certainly am studying it, and am a lot more familiar than I was. As I’ve said several times before, I think there’s probably very little real risk, but (again) it isn’t the point. You miss the point yet again – it’s the one part that DOESN’T matter. This stopped being an engineering matter and became a PR matter quite quickly, and that’s what did the damage.
LeSving wrote:
They had a goal of 70% repurchasing of kits, which some said was a pipe dream. The result so far is 81%. In short, things are going well, much better than expected. IMO it’s good to see that the world has not yet gone completely off rail T
The January cashflow numbers will be important, and I think it’s not more than a few days before those are due out.
The re-order rate appears encouraging. However December cashflow was over a million dollars less cash received than they projected in their original plan to the court. They mitigated that to some extent by also reducing cash expenditures – I think the primary control they have on cash outflow is how much they choose to pay Lycoming each month.
I think the speculation around Lycoming and why they can’t give timeframes for engine deliveries is mostly missing the mark. Lycoming will have come to the table with an opening position of “pay us everything you owe if you want us to ship another engine” and it’s probably taking a while to get to something workable for Van’s. No doubt that getting each engine out the door is very expensive for Van’s, because they’ll have to pay for it and probably some agreed % of their overall debt to Lycoming to get it to ship. So timelines aren’t being estimated because the number of engines they can get moving each month probably depends to how much ‘spare’ cash there is that month.
I’ve just requested my replacement LCPs via the portal. Will be interesting to see when they ship, and if ordering some ‘blue’ parts (that you have to pay for) results in your replacements getting priority because it involves new cash.
Lycoming will have come to the table with an opening position of “pay us everything you owe if you want us to ship another engine” and it’s probably taking a while to get to something workable for Van’s
I’d imagine that’s correct but on the balance Vans customer base is one of their major businesses and they’re going to have to share the pain.
My local contact who is a vendor to Vans did not by chance have any existing debt to worry about, Vans paid their bill to him just before the bankruptcy. As a result it was I’m told relatively easy to set up new limited credit terms and get back into profitable production. That is beneficial for any supplier, including those who are trying to make up for a prior loss.
Silvaire wrote:
I’d imagine that’s correct but on the balance Vans customer base is one of their major businesses and they’re going to have to share the pain.
Lycoming do not presently sell direct to RV builders, but that is an option open to them if they cannot agree terms with Van’s. They will certainly share the pain to some extent, but they are probably the creditor in the most powerful position. They also have a large order backlog, so are probably not struggling to find a customer to send an engine to if Van’s don’t stump up for the next one off the line. The choice of how many engines to pay for and get out to customers is probably the only significant discretionary spend Van’s has each month, so how many go out will likely depend on how well the rest of the operation does.
The biggest obstacle to Lycoming playing hardball is probably what the court will approve in terms of Van’s favouring them over other creditors. The fact that there isn’t a creditors committee probably keeps this from becoming front and centre and allows more wiggle room than there otherwise might be.
I can only understand this engineering analysis in the context of a bankrupcy recovery plan. That in itself, however, should not diminish its engineering validity.
Contrast that with this . Note that the post talks about two AD’s on Cessna 210 aircraft: the carrythrough spar and the spar caps (AD 2012-10-04) . With regards to the latter, the analysis was conceptually easier than that of Vans’ because Cessna knew which part exactly was cracking (one specific part in the spar cap assy, rather than multiple parts in multiple assemblies) , and the one affected assembly (spar) is critical (single load-path main spar) .
Cessna not only did the fatigue analysis, mainly to determine inspection thresholds and frequencies , but also testing on a real wing spar with varying extents of the crack, and showed ultimate load carrying capability with the affected spar cap part completely cracked through (ie the wing structure remaining fully functional with the cracked part bearing zero load and a fully loaded spar at 5.7G’s at MTOW) .
Cessna and the AD still mandate immediate grounding if a crack, no matter how small, is found on that part .
Doing just fine now it seems.
