{"id":193134,"date":"2009-01-17T06:14:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T11:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/17\/thielert-aero-diesel-manufacturer-back-in-black\/"},"modified":"2009-01-17T06:14:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T11:14:00","slug":"thielert-aero-diesel-manufacturer-back-in-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/17\/thielert-aero-diesel-manufacturer-back-in-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Thielert Aero-Diesel Manufacturer Back In Black"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised by the news that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flightglobal.com\/articles\/2009\/01\/12\/320877\/business-briefs.html\">Thielert Aircraft Engines&#8217; insolvency administrator has announced a (probably small) profit<\/a>, and is looking for a buyer.<\/p>\n<p>You can find a rundown of my previous stuff <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/search?q=thielert\">here<\/a>, but here is the nickel tour:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Thielert makes a revolutionary aircraft turbo diesel based on a Mercedes block, which is fuel efficient and runs on AvJet fuel, which is easier to find, and cheaper, than AvGas.<\/li>\n<li>Thielert gets a number of deals to supply engines in the aftermarket, to OEMs (particularly Diamond), and for UAVs.<\/li>\n<li>Thielert gets into financial problems.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>This appears to be 1 part fraud, and 1 part that the engine, particularly the reduction gearing to the prop needs more maintenance than anticipated, and Thielert is getting hammered by guarantee costs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>The founder is kicked out, and the company is placed under an insolvency administrator (in the US, we would call this Chapter 11).<\/li>\n<li>The administrator cancels guarantee support and jacks up the price (gouges really) on spares, forcing most of the operators to ground their aircraft.<\/li>\n<li>Diamond tells Thielert to go Cheney themselves, and starts to develop an aero-diesel based on the same engine block.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Diamond also takes a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">major<\/span> hit in their business too, as they had used the Thielert engine extensively, and certification of a new engine is a non-trivial process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What has happened over the past few months apparently is that the insolvency administrator, Bruno K\u00fcbler, has come to understand the market, reduced spares prices, and started to supply a limited amount of support under its old guarantees.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, they are looking to sell the engine in the future without the extensive guarantee, so as to avoid this problem in the future&#8230;.It&#8217;s a change in business model, with the majority of future profits being in engine support, rather than the initial sale.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s still a promising technology, though I am still dubious of Thielert&#8217;s continued existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised by the news that Thielert Aircraft Engines&#8217; insolvency administrator has announced a (probably small) profit, and is looking for a buyer. You can find a rundown of my previous stuff here, but here is the nickel tour: Thielert makes a revolutionary aircraft turbo diesel based on a Mercedes block, which &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1005,1128,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-business","category-propulsion","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193134"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}