Most people believe that everything that can be invented has already been invented, and
manufacturers are merely designing products that will sell well according to the market conditions.
And that's not a lie; the aviation industry is a huge, complex, and expensive industry.
The cost of error is high, and no one is in a hurry to take risks. The hesitation to take
risks can sometimes be devastatingly expensive, and our today's legend is a victim of hesitation.
To better understand why Mooney aircraft failed, let's understand the last models of the M20;
the M20U Ovation Ultra, and the M20V Acclaim Ultra, but for the sake of simplicity,
we’ll talk more about the Acclaim. When the Mooney M20V Acclaim Ultra came to the market,
it delivered something pilots had long wished for; a second door, Mooney did not just add
another door, they made both doors wider, making entries and exits easier.
The panel and cabin have been updated. The four-seat interior's updated ergonomic design,
which has hand stitched Italian leather seats, abundant cup holders, and power outlets,
is inspired by luxury automobiles. There are two color combinations available for
the accentuated leather seats: black + saddle brown and black + light grey. The switchology
on the new panel for the Acclaim Ultra has been restructured, and rockers have replaced toggles.
The panel is well-organized, but some switches are hidden by the yoke due to its small size. The
airplane has the most modern, user-friendly Garmin G1000 NXi avionics as well as Synthetic Vision.
This system has faster processing for a quicker startup and almost instant graphics refreshing.
Garmin appears to have simplified the operational logic, and the displays are brighter and clearer.
The Garmin keypad, which is now placed at the bottom of the panel, can be used to control
the G1000 avionics. The option to write in fixes and frequencies rather than turning the G1000's
knobs is a huge improvement, even though it is not quite in the ideal place for the armrest position.
The GFC700 autopilot and the G1000 NXi are fully connected, and a vertical control panel
is positioned in the middle of the two display displays. The GFC700 currently has a reputation
as the best new autopilot in General Aviation and it’s deserved. It allows for flexible
aircraft control and the ride is silky smooth. The Acclaim Ultra is well equipped that there aren't
many extra options to choose from. For $16,720, you can add the GTS 800 active traffic system,
but most pilots don’t go for it because ADSB traffic is as good as it gets.
Because of the weight limit, you can get either ice protection or air conditioning, not both.
The air conditioning is a $29,000 option with a weight penalty of 66 pounds, or 30 kilograms. TKS
weighs 95 pounds, or 43 kilograms fully charged, and it adds $65,000 to the invoice. Most pilots
always ditch the air conditioning, because they can simply pop the door open during taxi.
Speaking of the new second door, adding a second door to a 50-year-old design
is no easy feat, Mooney made them bigger and better. The doors have new latching mechanisms
and tasty brushed aluminum handles. This means that access to the rear seats is much easier.
In addition to that, having a door on the left side of the fuselage allows the pilot
to step right into the left seat without having to squeeze through the entire cabin.
Visibility over the glare shield is noticeably better than in the earlier Ovations
and the Bravo because Mooney has lowered the height of the panel by more than two inches,
something that's especially welcome when taxiing at night. The higher glare shields were an
undesirable carryover from the Porsche Mooney days that has finally been corrected. On top of that,
they also added a new composite skin to enclose the cabin’s protective Chromoly-steel roll cage.
Traditionally all-metal, the airplane now has a composite canopy that enhances the aerodynamic
flow and reduces cabin noise. Also, the windshield and windows are slotted into the composite from
the outside, a process that is much faster and will make replacements a breeze compared with
the previous design. The tail cone and wings remained metal, and the cowling was already
made of composites. The airplane sports dozens of less obvious improvements, including a carbon
fiber cowl, gear doors and wingtips, and drag performance including a gap seal for the flaps.
Speaking of performance, the aircraft is powered by a 280-horsepower Continental TSIO-550-G,
with three bladed Hartzell propellers in front. It achieves a maximum climb rate of 1,375 feet,
a ceiling of 25,000 feet, or 7,620 meters, and a maximum speed of 242 knots. At an economy cruise
speed of 175 knots, the maximum range is 1,275 nautical miles, with a fuel burn of roughly
20 gallons per hour. Mooney’s turbocharged models have never been payload workhorses,
and neither is the Acclaim Ultra. Despite the serious innovations the Acclaim and the Acclaim
Ultra got, they couldn’t save Mooney from the economic nose dive course. There are reasons
why Mooney’s sold slowly this time around, and it wasn’t the machines. The company greatly improved
the product; they added space, a pilot-side door, made the windows bigger and the avionics sweeter,
all by incorporating a composite forward fuselage shell. The transformation was impressive.
Unfortunately, it failed to impress potential customers enough to keep the program alive.
The new Ultras, the brand name for the new, improved M20s, sold slowly, which is sad
because they did everything aeronautical at a great rate of speed. The Acclaim Ultra is
the fastest production piston single ever, and by a good margin, too. Why some people turn up
their noses at Al Mooney’s old-school design is a mystery to me. 240 knots is wicked fast,
and even if corrected for actual flying conditions because, let’s face it, who flies a single at
25,000 feet, you’re still looking at a 220-knot airplane in the mid-teens at less than 20gph.
The M20’s main competition, if you can even call the Mooney competition,
is the Cirrus SR22 and the Cessna TTX, which are slower, more expensive, and, for some people;
less sexy than Mooney’s slick little retractable gear speedster.
But the Cirrus SR22 outsold Mooneys by a factor of around 50:1. Why? In part, it’s because Cirrus
has a stable business profile, its marketing is super slick, its technology is top notch, and
it has the parachute, which a lot of pilots, and not just their spouses, are asking for these days.
Did the M20, which is time-consuming to build, ever really have a chance against the SR22?
Of course, it didn’t. Nothing exists in a vacuum, which is to say that Mooney’s success,
at least some of it, will come from siphoning sales from Cirrus and perhaps Cessna’s TTx.
How would the three look to a potential buyer comparing them?
First, payload. For the sake of not kinda comparing apples to oranges,
let's use the Ovation Ultra for this comparison instead of the Acclaim because of the payload
difference. The Ovation Ultra had a useful load of 1050 pounds on a gross weight of 3368 pounds.
Standard fuel is 100 gallons, so with full tanks, that leaves 450 pounds for people and stuff.
The Ultra, then, is a two-person airplane with generous baggage or a three-person ride if down
fueled by about 20 gallons. The SR22—the direct competitor—has a useful load of about 1200 pounds
on a gross of 3600 pounds, so it’s not really a seats full, tanks full airplane,
but can get there with little down fueling. This, in part, may account for why Cirrus dominates
the single-engine high-performance market and why sales of the SR22 and turbocharged SR22T
are almost evenly split. Even though surveys consistently find that most piston GA trips
carry just one or two people, buyers apparently want the option of backseats they can really use.
Except some would rather go farther and faster with the rear seats full of stuff or
nothing at all. These are the probable Mooney buyers. Head-to-head against the SR22,
the Mooney flies farther, is faster, and burns less gas than the Cirrus. For all-out range
on full tanks, with a 45-minute reserve, the Ovation Ultra can manage 1154 still-air miles
against the Cirrus’ 872 miles—a range delta of 32 percent. It will get there faster, too.
Non-turbocharged aircraft typically reach their cruise stride at 8000 to 10,000 feet. Climbing
above that without a turbocharger dings cruise speed because of diminishing engine power. Still,
the Ultra is a solid 190-knot airplane at these altitudes using best-power throttle settings. Dial
it back to best economy and the speed is still 180 knots. The SR22 is eight to 10 knots slower.
It’s also a little thirstier. At 8000 feet and 75 percent power, the SR22 will cruise at 180 knots
and 17.8 gallons. The Mooney will do 190 knots at 15.9 GPH. Thus is the payoff of a lighter,
smaller airframe with landing gear that folds up. But was the niche attractive enough to let
the program survive the long term? Hard to say. Would sales of 50 planes a year have been enough?
Maybe not. It’s expensive to build airplanes, and much of that expense is beyond Mooney's control.
Mooney buys a lot of components from vendors, and there are hundreds of items on every Mooney,
everything from engines and props to nuts and bolts, is sold by those vendors so they can
make a profit. They are not giving engines away. And the things the airframer needs to build take
hundreds of employees and extremely expensive infrastructure and tooling. Building airplanes
is not for the faint of heart, or checkbook. So, could Mooney have succeeded? Maybe, but it would
have had to have exceeded expectations, by a lot. The part of the problem that is never talked about
is that Mooney was and is still owned by a Chinese company. Part of the promise of
Chinese ownership was that a burgeoning Chinese aviation sector would drive sales of hundreds
upon hundreds of new Mooneys. The company even designed a cute little two-seater, the model M10,
which kind of resembled the old Mooney M10 Cadet, which was an outgrowth of the Ercoupe design. It
never got built or flown, and the thousands of sales of that emerging model never materialized.
The sprawling Mooney International Corp. factory in Kerrville, Texas,
where more than 11,000 single-engine airplanes have been produced since 1953,
has slipped back into hibernation. When, or if, it will ever reemerge, no one really knows.
A previous skeleton crew kept the company alive, on paper at least, from 2008 until 2013.
The latest Mooney closure isn’t surprising given the company’s weak sales record. The company
delivered just 14 airplanes in 2018, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association,
well below the company’s stated annual target of at least 25. The Chinese owners invested heavily
in modernizing production with new equipment and materials, and they made thoughtful improvements
to its flagship M20 Ovation and Acclaim Ultra models with a left-side door and composite cabin.
And even though the M20s are faster and have nearly identical engines and avionics to the
market-leading Cirrus SR22s, Mooneys don’t have airframe parachutes—and for that reason alone,
Cirrus far outsold them. An airframe parachute would have boosted new aircraft sales, but Mooney
was not willing to pursue FAA certification for a parachute. Instead, they focused on the emerging
Asian market and planned to produce airplanes in China. But that market never materialized.
Mooney has a loyal following among owners who prize speed, handling qualities, range,
and value—and the existing fleet of used Mooney aircraft was its most serious competition.
For example, a brand-new Acclaim had a retail price of $800,000, but 10-year-old models with
nearly identical performance are available for one-third or even one-fourth of that amount.
Value-conscious Mooney pilots were reluctant to pay such a high premium for new airplanes
when the same amount gets a Cirrus, which gets them a parachute peace of mind.
Mooney has economically deteriorated so many times only to be revived by optimistic new owners
as to defy any realistic laws of business. The plane is fundamentally a great design.
It also has a good base to form a core parts and support business. Mooney was
offering refurb programs for old models, and that might still be an expansion option.
As for coming back? The Cirrus SR22 dominates the market not only because it’s a good design,
but because they have a skilled and aggressive sales force and post-sale customer care that
owners rave about. To remain a player, Mooney may have to at least match that.