As we Floridians prepare to face Hurricane Milton starting later today, I’m pleased to give an update on one of our leading companies in the LSA space. I refer to Flight Design, which gained fame for the enviable success of its CT-series aircraft (CT2K, CTSW, CTLS, CTLSi, CT Super). In the United States, more of these models fly as LSA than aircraft from any other brand.
Tom Peghiny flies the first F2 in America. Note the “Experimental” status at the time. F2 has since been accepted by FAA in the LSA category and is “Mosaic-ready.”
In the USA, importing Flight Design aircraft is now handled by Airtime Aviation, a leader in its own right. For two decades, Airtime has been the nation’s #1 seller of Light-Sport Aircraft, delivering to American pilots a large percentage of those hundreds of CT-series aircraft. Importing was previously handled by Flight Design USA; regional dealers also contributed to enlarging the CT fleet in this country. The German designer has enjoyed good success in numerous countries.
image by AOPA courtesy of Flight Design USA
In addition to those many sales, Flight Design has long been a leader among western producers moving into Eastern Europe to take advantage of skilled technical workers and engineers.
Changing with Global Events
On October 8th, 2024, Flight Design announced, “We have good news to share.”
With headquarters in Eisenach, Germany, the company’s primary production facility is now located in Sumperk, Czech Republic. For years, the Western European producer has been building aircraft in Kherson, Ukraine. Given daily news coverage, every American knows by now Ukraine has been in defense mode following the Russian invasion almost three years ago. After the situation became completely unworkable — Kherson was an early area to be bombed, then occupied by Russian troops — the company quietly removed tooling, inventory, raw materials, and even some workers to less hazardous facilities in the nearby Czech Republic.
First unveiled at Aero 2019, F2 is a second-generation design following the very popular CT-series.
“F2 series is a very advanced light aircraft,” said Flight Design, “available as a Special Light-Sport Aircraft and an EASA CS-23 type-certified aircraft. They are built and production test flown in Sumperk, in the Eastern Moravia region.” Flight Design first used Sumperk as an R&D and flight test center during the development of the F2 series before developing production tooling at this location in 2023.
Those black vertical stripes inside the Garmin G3X screens are panel-mounted airbags, a first in the light aircraft space.
F2 is an all-composite high-wing lightplane with many unique safety features including passive stall and spin resistance, a rigid, crashworthy cockpit design and Garmin ESP envelope protection as a part of its advanced, twin-screen Garmin G3X panel. All Flight Design aircraft come with a standard Stratos Magnum Ballistic Parachute System installed. See this prior article explaining F2’s stall resistance plus a pilot review.
Increased Production
“The best news is that we are [now] ramping up production in Sumperk after the big task of moving our people and tooling from Ukraine,” said Daniel Guenther, Managing Director of Flight Design. “We are currently shipping two F2-LSA a month to Airtime Aviation, our distributor in the USA.”
“We are very happy to be receiving more and more F2 aircraft,” said Tom Gutmann Jr., manager of Airtime Aviation. “With the extra allowances under Mosaic we believe that sales will only go up from here as it will increase the utility of the F2-LSA for existing planes we delivered as well as newly-built models. An additional benefit of the increased production is improved quality of the planes as delivered.”
FAA’s proposed Mosaic regulation is widely expected to allow higher gross weights and double the speed envelope for the SLSA category. Flight Design envisioned this regulatory overhaul as engineers designed F2. The company believes their planning “will allow previously-delivered F2s to benefit from this significant rule change.”
Changes for CT-Series
While the company’s focus is clearly on F2 as a next generation model following their solid run with the CT-series, they continue to build the CT-series and offered news on that, too.
“We have recently moved production of the CT-series — including CTLSi and CT Super (nearby image), which continue to be popular worldwide — to our new partners in Kazakhstan. This allows us to focus more on the F2 at Sumperk,” said Daniel.
If you can’t recall where Kazakhstan is, don’t fret. Such remote fabrication has been used by Boeing and Airbus for many years. The parent company in Germany is permitted to sublet work to off-site facilities so long as they maintain control of the design and conduct regular oversight of production and quality control. After many years of doing exactly that in Ukraine, Flight Design is well equipped to pursue building its CT-series in Kazakhstan, Central Asia.
Pricing for F2?
Please contact Airtime Aviation for pricing — links were provided.