Plastic Pilot

Diamond received approval from both EASA and Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) to produce DA40-TDI airplanes in its new facility in Binzhou, China. According to Diamond’s press release, the 400′000 square feet factory will deliver 80 G1000 equipped DA40-TDI in 2008. The planes produced in China will be delivered to customers on the Asia area market.

This is Diamond’s third manufacturing facility, complementing the one in Wiener-Neustadt (Austria) and London (Ontario, Canada). Strategically speaking, having an additional facility in China sounds a good idea. As the planes will be produced local market, no europan or american jobs will be lost because of this.

If you missed it, there has been a huge reaction when Cessna announced that the SkyCatcher LSA would be assembled in China, even for the US market. I’m not judging Cessna’s decision nor buyers reaction, but the way Cessna did manage the communication and marketing issues relating to it.

Once again Diamond’s management seem to do things correctly: produce locally to reduce part of the cost and not upset customers.

It will also be interesting in mid-term to monitor incident statistics. As all planes will be produced on the local continent, it will be possible to see if “Made In China” planes will do better or worse than their “Made In UK” or “Made In Canada” sisters. Only time will tell…