Ampaire Gets Firm Order For Hybrid Caravans - AVweb

Careful there, this “news” story was NOT an accurate quote about the expected STC certification timeline. Ampaire did NOT claim “it expects supplemental type certification for the hybrid system by 2024”

They actually said in their press release “The company is working with the FAA to achieve supplemental type certificate approval in 2024.”

Their actual sentence was obviously carefully scrubbed by their legal team so as to not make a legal Forward Looking Statement but doesn’t mean a darned thing, it just expresses that they will be “working with” the FAA. (So will I and a lot of people. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and they’ll hand out certs for all our projects on Christmas Eve 2024!)

If Ampaire actually had any factual basis to expect certification in 2024 and believed a rational person would draw that conclusion if they were asked to explain their optimism to the SEC when served a subpoena, the sentence would have read something like:

     "Based on our progress and ongoing discussions with FAA certification branch 
      regarding our timeline, by the end of 2024 we expect to earn an STC for this 
      new-technology powerplant, its installation in B Caravans, operations, associated 
      power source, controllers and chargers,  and required maintenance and inspection 
      to ensure continued airworthiness in commercial service."

That would still give them a lot of wiggle room, but they obviously chose to say nothing at all and hope no aviation journalist would make the night-and-day distinction.

The “airline” specifically gave no mention of a year they expect to take delivery. According to Ampaire: “Disclaimer: The specifications listed are the performance targets driving our technical development and are subject to change without notice.” So if you call that a firm offer on a plane with no hard specs which offers only literally 61 words of detail from the manufacturer, I’ve got some great business opportunities for you!

Their first flight of this tech (not their push/pull 337 hybrid project) was in Feb. If they get an STC for a product with no defined cert path by 2024, it would a big change for the FAA’s processes that would be quite a shock.

As far as skin, turns out that’s you and me! According to grants dot gov the US taxpayers are multi-million dollar investors in these guys/gals/etc. from NASA award of multiple no-strings-attached aviation sustainability research grants. Have a look at the PowerPoints on nasa dot gov and tell me if you think we’re getting a good deal…