Jay Honeck wrote:
I'm a bit worried about the way he dismissed composite aircraft, too. He
may be a bit too much in the past...

He's not that offbase, Jay.
Until the FAA gets realistic and allows that composite structures don't
really need to be as beefy and overbuilt as they now require, the excess
weight is not going to go away and the advantage of composites will not
be realize.

Even if the manufacturer spends millions of dollars for waterjet
cutters, autoclaves, vaccuum bagging and winding machines, composite
structures are still labor intensive and are easily contaminated.
Getting the material properly wetted to an even consistancy is difficult
and wasteful.

Beech is the only company to fully embrace composites, largely because
of the Starship program. That was an expensive learning lesson for them,
but they are probably the leading manufactures in the field as a result.

Aluminum is easy to fabricate, you know how much it really weights, and
you can train most anyone to work with it. The only thing you really
cannot control is the metal market and related costs.