Gippsland's Airvan Aids Australians
As They Move Back Into Export Mart

GA 8 Airvan

Making its debut at Asian Aerospace and, in fact, at any major event outside its home country, Victoria-based Gippsland Aeronautics is launching a sales offensive intended to add Asian customers to its already growing order book. Since the demise of the Nomad twin turboprop two decades ago, Australia has had little to offer the export market apart from ultralight sport aircraft, and an earlier attempt to produce a piston-engined, single-prop utility machine resulted in that company relocating to the U.S. in an attempt to gain financial backing.

That has now changed. The GA 8 Airvan on display at the Show is an angular, but functional design produced by a company previously known for the GA-200 Fatman crop sprayer, 44 of which have been produced. In a nutshell, its main sales point is a price tag which knocks $50,000 (U.S.) off that of a Cessna 206 and about $100,000 from a refurbished de Havilland Beaver. This has so impressed a Canadian company which refurbishes Beavers that it has become Gippsland's North American agent and will produce advanced versions of the aircraft under license. Recommendation, indeed.

Airvans have been in service in Australia for a little over a year and the first export aircraft is shortly to begin operations in Belize, Central America. Twenty have been ordered by tourist operators in the past six months, the company being confident that other companies in the UK and Africa will join the list before the end of this year.

As one might expect from an Australian aircraft, the Airvan has been designed to operate from short airstrips in basic conditions and be easy to maintain. It has eight seats (or room for a ton of freight) in a wide fuselage; an uncluttered instrument panel incorporating a GPS moving map; and a double-size rear side door which can be opened in flight for parachuting.

According to Michael Hall, Gippsland managing director, who is presenting the aircraft on stand C146, "The Airvan is an inexpensive people mover [which] is ideal for tourist operators in remote areas. For overseas operators, who also benefit from the low Australian dollar, it's a very attractive proposition."

This view is echoed by Gerry Geltch, whose Air Fraser Island was an early local customer: "It's a solid, practical workhorse. A good machine that fills the gap between the [Cessna] 206 and the [Cessna 208] Caravan."

With production now comfortably in hand, Gippsland is looking forward to a military variant for surveillance and related missions, as well as a ten-seat version powered by a turbine engine.

By Paul Jackson