Beechcraft sold

In article om,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

As an instructor, I get to fly a lot of different airplanes and talk to
a lot of owners. I'm convinced that the only people who hate Beech
airplanes are those who haven't flown them.

I didn't say I hated Beech -- far from it. Although none of their
birds fits my current mission, which requires lots of economical
lifting capacity and a wide CG range -- I would LOVE to own a Bonanza
some day.

What I said was that they have become irrelevant. They sell a tiny
number of aircraft each year (thanks to their outrageous pricing), and
the last new aircraft design to come out of Beech was....what? I
can't think of anything new since the Starship debacle of the early
1980s.

Since that occurred right after I graduated from college -- and I'm now
48 years old -- I think I'm safe in saying that Beech has become
irrelevant to aviation. If they went away tomorrow, we would all shed
a tear for the Beech line -- but it would have zero impact on general
aviation.

The same cannot be said, for example, of Cessna, Piper, Cirrus or
Columbia.

What on earth has Cessna or Piper done in the last 20 years? The 172
Cessna is selling today is the same airframe they were selling 20 years
ago, just with a glass panel, 13(!) fuel drains, and 100 lbs less useful
load. Same with Piper. I was in a brand new Archer a couple of years ago;
the biggest change they had managed to make was to move some of the
switches to an overhead panel which made the windshield smaller and reduced
forward/upward visibility. Made it look cool (like a miniature airliner),
but a net decrease in safety.

Cirrus, Katana, Columbia, and the like are the future of GA today.
Assuming there is any future left in GA :-(