Columbia Aircraft

The Columbia Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation was an aircraft manufacturer that designed and built light general aviation aircraft. In November 2007 it became a division of Cessna.

History

In 1994 NASA launched the Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) project in an attempt to re-energize the rapidly shrinking general aviation (GA) market. A series of factors, including new regulatory requirements and immense legal liability lawsuit settlements made the GA field unprofitable and most manufacturers had abandoned production of piston-engined light aircraft to concentrate on the business turbine aircraft market. As a result GA design work had basically ended and aircraft for sale in 1990 were essentially the same as those from the 1970s. With a thriving market for used aircraft, American GA aircraft production numbers declined from 18,000 in 1978 to 954 in 1993, an all-time low.

During the same period the kit-built market was thriving. Free of some of the problems that certified aircraft had, and populated largely by experimenters looking for better performance, the kit market expanded rapidly in the 1980s. Designs available as kits often surpassed the performance of certified aircraft, while also being much less expensive. A leading kit manufacturer, Lancair's high performance Lancair IV design set a number of records, including a long-range flight at 360–mph.