Adam Aircraft is airborne again.
The company, now called AAI Acquisition Inc., said Thursday that it has hired 100 people over the past two months, including a former Beech Aircraft president as its chief executive.
Its A700 jet plane is back in the air for testing, with a goal of obtaining Federal Aviation Administration certification within 18 months, said CEO Jack Braly, a Colorado native.
AAI, which bought Adam out of bankruptcy in April and retained 50 key employees, now has 150 people working at its Centennial Airport headquarters.
Employment will double by the end of the year and grow to 500 by the end of 2009, Braly said Thursday.
The company plans to keep its operations at the Arapahoe County airport for the foreseeable future, Braly said.
“The first thing we have to do is get this plane certified, and to do that we have to finish the design,” Braly said. “We’re very aggressively looking around the country for engineers.”
Funded by a group of Russian investors with $3 billion in capital, AAI bought Adam Aircraft from Chapter 7 liquidation in April for $10 million plus assumed liabilities. The company secured a loan of up to $50 million from its investors, officials said at the time.
Some analysts have questioned whether sufficient demand exists for the A700, which will serve the corporate-jet and emerging “air taxi” market.
Adam Aircraft ran out of money trying to finish the design of the A700 and get FAA certification. The new owners got a break when the FAA agreed to let AAI resume testing where Adam left off, rather than having to start over, Braly said.
FAA testing is 50 percent complete, he said.
AAI said it will not resume production of the A500 propeller plane.
Braly worked for Martin Marietta for eight years, then went to Beech Aircraft, where he rose to president in 15 years.
He was president of Sino Swearingen Aircraft in San Antonio before retiring in 2002 and moving back to the Denver area.
He was a consultant to Adam Aircraft before it went bankrupt. The new owners approached him after buying the company.
“I’ve loved airplanes my whole life,” he said. “I thought, ‘Here is a challenge.’ What an honor it is to have someone come to you and say, ‘We need to haul you out of retirement to run this company.’ ”
Greg Griffin: 303-954-1241 or griffin@denverpost.com
