11 November 2006
<span style=”font-size:9px; font-weight:bold; color:gray”>From our team at AOPA Expo in Palm Springs</span>
According to Bing Lantis, CEO and President of Columbia, 2006 has been a challenging year. Firstly, certification delays on the Garmin 1000 caused a delivery backlog. This was followed by a serious hailstorm that caused some cosmetic damage to 60 or so undelivered aeroplanes.
Lantis went on to say that (thankfully) things are back to normal, and went on to present the 500th Columbia aircraft, a Columbia 400, to Sherry Gettinger, who just last year was awarded the most recent pilot award at the AOPA banquet.
Columbia is planning to build approximately 250 aircraft next year, but the company remained tight lipped on any future developments, with Lantis commenting that the R&D engineers come to work every day, so are presumably working on something!
