There's life in them old spamcans... (Piper sells 152 aircraft to China in one go)

I find it a bit hard to believe that 152 aircraft is Piper’s largest ever order for training aircraft… But I’d guess if you look past huge wartime Army orders for 65 HP Cubs (which were originally designed as training aircraft) it might be true.

That will upset the GAMA stats quite nicely. Well done Piper.

The US AOPA article shows that the “order” is over 7 years, so

• the school has to survive for 7 years
• it will be practically impossible to enforce a contract with a company in China, should they want to reduce the requirement

The article says Piper sold 99 aircraft in the last quarter, which is pretty amazing. It probably tells us that

• schools with a real business are no longer willing to be scraping out the barrel buying airframes from the 1970s GA stock overhang
• there isn’t anything else that is considered robust enough (interesting comment on Diamond, I guess?)