While the world of LSAs is diverse enough that the trials of Van’s Aircraft, which put itself into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last year, aren’t quite the foundational matters they are among the homebuilt crowd, the fact that Van’s is represented with the popular RV-12 and companies that support it are also part of the LSA ecosystem suggests more than a little spillover. In the background, Van’s has been working hard to reset its business and emerge from Chapter 11. And on May 15 the company received good news in the form of an Oregon judge approving the company’s reorganization plan. While it seemed unlikely, there was always the possibility that the court would reject or modify the company’s proposal.
In the proposal, Van’s has agreed to repay unsecured creditors 55% of the money they’re owed over three years on top of an “immediate” repayment of $3350 for those in the unsecured creditor class. It’s important to note that this class of creditor mainly includes customers who had deposits with the company when it began Chapter 11 protection and who also declined revised purchase agreements that came with an increase in kit and component costs of about 30%. According to filed documents, around 82% of those affected builders agreed to the new agreement, which dramatically reduced the pool of unsecured creditors.
In the reorganization plan submitted to the court, Van’s said it “must show that it will have enough cash over the life of the Plan to make the required Plan payments and operate its business. Debtor’s [Van’s] primary revenue sources for the next three years will come from the sale of its eight different kit airplanes, one model of production ready-to-fly plane, and one future backcountry airplane kit.”
The ready-to-fly airplane is the RV-12, of course, and the backcountry model is the RV-15, which the company also feels could make an excellent MOSAIC airplane down the road. Van’s has also committed to a corporate reorganization and implementation of a scalable MRP (material requirements planning) software suite that will give it much better visibility to real costs than it had before—all key requirements of a company projecting gross revenues of $69.5 million to $73.5 million per year between now and mid-2027.
It’s interesting to note that Van’s had begun increasing the RV-12’s production rate through the 2021-23 time period (it filed for Chapter 11 in October 2023), fr
https://youtu.be/vHt7duxQUzs?feature=sharedom 11 units in ‘21 to 20 aircraft in ‘22 to 28 in ‘23. Looking at registrations so far in 2024, the RV-12 has 25, trailing the Zenith CH 750 at 30 and ahead of the RANS S-21 at 24 and the Kitfox S-7 Sport at 17.
