Aussie Air Reims F406 Caravan II ADL Finney

Cessna F172K take off from the grass runway

Reims Aviation Industries was a French

aircraft manufacturer An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry. ...

located in the city of

Reims Reims ( ; ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French Departments of France, department of Marne (department), Marne, and the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 12th most populous city in Fran ...

, most recently producing the F406 Caravan II. Reims Aviation was a wholly owned subsidiary of GECI Aviation.

History

Max Holste, the company founder, built his first aircraft in 1931, a light two-seater aircraft called the SHB1. In 1946, he started his own aircraft company, Avions Max Holste, in downtown Reims. In the 1950s, two new models were designed: the MH.1521 Broussard in 1950 and the MH.260 Super Broussard in 1959. In 1960, a cooperative agreement was signed with

Cessna Cessna () is an American brand of general aviation aircraft owned by Textron Aviation since 2014, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. Originally, it was a brand of the Cessna Aircraft Company, an American general aviation aircraft manufactu ...

to produce light aircraft for the European market. The company was officially born as Reims Aviation in 1962, mainly producing the FR172 ''Reims Rocket'', a more powerful version of the Cessna 172. In 1989, Reims Aviation bought back all the shares held by Cessna and became a private French aircraft manufacturer. Production of the single-engined airplanes was halted, and only the F406 remained in production. The company entered receivership on 10 September 2013. On 25 March 2014, the Commercial Court of Reims approved the transfer of the Company's aircraft maintenance, cabin management, integration and installation systems assets to ASI Innovation and the transfer of its F406 assets to Continental Motors, Inc. With the disposition of the company's assets, its parent company, GECI Aviation, was also liquidated on 17 April 2014. Continental has indicated that it plans to continue the production of the F406 in

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...

.Rod Simpsons for FlyCorporate (March 28, 2014)
Reims F406 sold to Continental Motors
, article retrieved January 2nd, 2015.

Products

The F406 was the last model still in production at the time of bankruptcy. All aircraft were made in cooperation with Cessna. * Reims F150 * Reims F152 * Reims F172 * Reims FR172 Rocket * Reims F177 * Reims F182 * Reims F337 * Reims-Cessna F406 Caravan II

References

External links

Historique des avions Max Holste jusqu'à Reims Aviation
(french)
Interview de Pierre Clostermann, président de Reims Aviation
(french) ''Aviation Magazine, 1973''.

{{Defunct aircraft manufacturers of France Defunct aircraft manufacturers of France Companies based in Reims Transport in Reims

Aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' include fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as h ...