The Airplane Factory 4.16

"The Airplane Factory is a Johannesburg based business focusing on the development and manufacture of high quality, high utility aircraft.

The Airplane Factory's first aircraft, the Sling, is a competitively priced high all round performance aluminium light sport aircraft which can be purchased ready to fly or as a homebuild kit.

For the adventure of it, and also to prove the aircraft to themselves and the world, during July and August 2009 Mike Blyth and James Pitman, the company’s founders, flew the production prototype Sling around the world, via EAA Oshkosh, the world’s largest airshow. The aircraft performed flawlessly, flying numerous legs over 2 000nm (3 600 km) over the world’s oceans, east to west and with the almost the entire route in the ITCZ. The only differences between the round the world aircraft and the standard production Sling were additional fuel tanks in the wings and an additional 15 layers of glass-fibre in the undercarriage.

Recently The Airplane Factory has relocated its operations from the Sunnyrock Industrial Park to The Tedderfield Airpark to the south of Johannesburg, an ideal venue for aircraft development, manufacture and testing. The employment complement has been substantially strengthened and production processes for the Sling finalized while development work on additional aircraft has been completed.

The Airplane Factory's next project is called the 5577 project. The 5577 project is about 5 technically superior Men and 5 aesthetically pleasing Women, building a Sling in 7 days. A bit like Madiba’s 46664, but with a considerably shorter period of hard labour.

Mike & James will then fly the uniquely created Sling to Poland in 7 days to deliver it to its eager new owner.

Directors:

Mike Blyth
James Pitman
Andrew Pitman