The Civil Aviation Safety Authority officially presented the type certificate for the Airvan 10 to Mahindra Aerospace at a ceremony in the Latrobe Valley yesterday.
Deputising for CASA Director of Aviation Safety Shane Carmody, Stakeholder Engagement Manager Rob Walker passed the certificate to GippsAero CEO Keith Douglas, marking the entry of the 10-seat single-engine turbo-prop in service, and the end of a six-year development program.
"This is hugely special," Douglas said. "It is only the second turbo-prop aircraft certified in Australia. So for the people here, the community [at GippsAero] this is hugely significant."
The only other turbine certified in Australia was the GAF Nomad, which GippsAero also owns the type certificate for.
During the acceptance speeches, Douglas, GippsAero founder and Director of Development George Morgan and Chief Test Pilot David Wheatland paid tribute to the hard work and dedication shown by the small staff at the Latrobe Valley factory, and thanked partners Rolls Royce, Garmin, Bilyara and others who contributed to the Airvan 10 program.
Certification of the Airvan 10 opens up a wide range of market opportunities for both GippsAero and parent company Mahindra Aerospace.
"It opens us up into a much bigger market, the turbo-prop market," Douglas said. "The piston-engine market is maybe 50-60 aircraft a year; the turbo-prop market is 150 per year. Cessna sells about 90 Caravans, the 750 XL maybe 30 of them. We're going to enter into this space, but we're not going to compete with them; we're actually going to provide the operators with another option that's not been there in the past.
"We're very, very excited about this."
The Airvan 10 is powered by a 450-hp Rolls Royce M250 turbine engine, and has a maximum take-off weight of 2166 kg and carries 1000 kg of load. It was designed to be as similar to the piston Airvan 8 as possible, but carries the added advantage of burning turbine fuel, which is often cheaper and more readily available than avgas in some world markets.
For GippsAero, the challenge now is to move the Airvan 10 smoothly from development into production.
"We will set-up capability here [Latrobe Regional Airport] to produce around 20 aircraft per year," Douglas said. "We're busy converting the plant to final assembly, but we will build capacity around what the market tells us, and not what we think we can. And that will take 2-3 years before we know the level of acceptance of the aircraft."
Douglas and the GippsAero team also plan to introduce the aeroplane in an unconventional way, shunning the tradition method of selecting a launch customer in favour of marketing by demonstration.
"We've decided to adopt a strategy that is very similar to the Airvan 8, which is to take the aircraft and demonstrate it, work with two or three key partners, who can then say 'fine tune this, tidy that up', and give us a lot of feedback.
"We're pretty clear where we'll go: New Zealand, Australia, the USA. One of our dealers in Alaska runs a small airline with 26 aircraft and he wants to increase that to 37, and he wants ten Airvan 10s."
According to Douglas, GippsAero's development team will now focus on smaller projects for the Airvan 10 such as floats, autopilot and airconditioning whilst the company completes a feasibility study into putting the twin turbo-prop Nomad back into production as the Airvan 18.