After testing the market for a year with a limited offering of ready-to-fly Light Sport aircraft, Vans Aircraft is taking the plunge into full production of its popular RV-12. In a podcast interview with AVweb at the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Fla., on Thursday, Adam Smith, a business development consultant for Vans, said the RV-12 production has moved into a new and much larger facility in Oregon to accommodate the continuous production of the plane. He said the earliest production slots available are in April.
Vans is showing off an RV-12 in a factory paint scheme at Sebring. The decision to move into building ready-to-fly aircraft was announced at AOPA Summit in 2012 and two “experimental” lots of factory aircraft totaling more than 20 airplanes sold out quickly. Smith said there will be no more batch production of airplanes and the new factory is designed for continuous production. Vans is the largest producer of kit aircraft in the world.
