By Susan T. Port, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Sep. 17--These days, officials at New Piper Aircraft say things are looking up.
Hit hard by poor economic conditions and continued fallout from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Vero Beach plane-maker has recently started hiring again.
The company added about 40 employees, mostly in manufacturing and engineering, during the last couple of months, said Mark Miller, spokesman for the company.
New Piper now employs 720, and Miller said the company expects to continue adding staff members. The company employed 1,250 before the 2001 attacks.
'We've gone back to some former employees,' Miller said.
Also, New Piper's newest plane, the 6XT, received certification from the Federal Aviation Administration just seven months after the product was launched, he said. The non-turbo version, the 6X, received FAA approval last month.
The planes are the first new models the Vero Beach company has introduced in three years. The 300-horsepower Piper 6X and Piper 6XT sell for $336,000 and $356,000, respectively.
The Vero Beach company has orders for 24 of the 6X and 6XT planes for this year.
'It's really caught on well,' Miller said. 'It's a sports-utility vehicle for the sky.'
Miller attributed the short time for FAA certification to the company's 'factory of the future' manufacturing model, in which employees from each department -- design, manufacturing, engineering, marketing -- work with FAA officials to come up with a plan and make sure things are done efficiently.
'We say, 'What do we need to do to achieve certification in this time frame?' ' Miller said.
New Piper has plans to launch new plane models every six months to a year. In July, the company was bought by Bethesda, Md.-based American Capital Strategies (Nasdaq: ACAS, $25.48) in a deal valued at more than $70 million.
New Piper needed to aggressively launch new models, said John Kraczkowski, business service coordinator for the Workforce Development Board of the Treasure Coast.
'You need to have the Volkswagen and the Cadillac, and you need to have something in between,' he said.
Shelly Simi, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based General Aviation Manufacturers Association, said many plane manufacturers have experienced sales drops in the past two years, but are expecting a recovery next year.
'Everyone is being very cautiously optimistic,' Simi said. 'They've scaled back production to meet demand. They can adjust their production rate once we get a better feel for the economy.'
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(c) 2003, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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