With AIN Media Group’s Aviation International News and its predecessor Aviation Convention News celebrating the company’s 50th year of continuous publication this year, AIN’s editorial staff is going back through the archives each month to bring readers some interesting events that were covered over the past half-century.
REWIND: (AIN January 1, 1995 p.28) Italian aircraft manufacturer Piaggio—maker of the P.180 twin pusher-prop utility transport—secured bankruptcy protection and additional governmental financial support in a November 21 ruling by a court in its home city of Genoa. The court decided that the company can be nurtured back to self-sufficiency under Italy’s “Prodi” bankruptcy law, which allows government support and legal protection from creditors for companies deemed to be of strategic importance to the national economy.
FASTFORWARD: For Piaggio, that bankruptcy was the first in what has been a turbulent existence for the airframer. It has changed hands several times over the past 27 years, yet perhaps improbably, as other OEMs have fallen by the wayside, still exists as a manufacturer. Since 2018, the company has languished in extraordinary receivership under a government-appointed commissar, as it continues to seek a qualified buyer. Despite all this upheaval, Piaggio has continued developing the aircraft with the Avanti Evo, the third generation of the P.180, entering service in 2015 and an unmanned version dubbed the Hammerhead making its first flight in 2018. Piaggio recorded €152 million in revenues last year and has a €500 million backlog.
Source: ainonline.com
