The acquisition of Continental Aerospace Technologies by Arcline Investment Management went through on Wednesday and on Thursday Continental announced that Keith Chatten is the new CEO, replacing Karen Hong. Continental was owned by Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) for 15 years. Arcline’s acquisition puts the company back in American hands. Arcline paid $523 million for the Mobile, Alabama-based engine maker. Under Chinese ownership, the company was trying to attract interest in its diesel engines for GA but most of its business remained with gasoline offerings.
Chatten previously worked for Continental for 15 years and also worked for Superior Air Parts as Vice President Engineering and later as CEO. “Continental has been at the heart of general aviation for more than 120 years, and I am honored to lead the Company during this exciting moment in its history,” said Chatten. “I look forward to working alongside this talented team to build on Continental’s legacy of engineering excellence while continuing to deliver the high-quality products, reliability and customer support that have defined the Company for generations.”
Rather happy about seeing Conti back in US ownership, but what exactly will happen next?
I mean, other than higher prices, a loss of intellectual property and sharing tons of engineering knowledge and capability, the Chinese version of future “Continnnnthal” engines could be much cheaper and likely better. Where, other than with higher prices, will the promised ROI be produced?
I somewhat hope that peeps will come to their senses with this idiotic Diesel hype. That cow is half dead now and will be deader than dead – a year after Democrats take over in November.
While Diesel or JET-A would be a tremendous progress to get our Dinosaur Frankenstein airplanes away from Lead, the future sees NO General Aviation (or people burning fossil fuel) just to keep a fun hobby alive. I hope thats not news to anyone?
Jason, don’t be so positive & optimistic. 😀
If you go back in time you’ll read many (paper) magazine articles discussing and asking the FAA to create a different category of Aviation that would be friendlier to the ‘General Aviation Pilots’. The FAA’s answer was the “Amateur-Built Aircraft” or 51% rule. That category of “Experimental Aircraft” has been successful and kept General Aviation alive. Then the FAA created the “Light-Sport Aviation Rules” that forced structural sacrifices because of the crazy arbitrary (600 kg) weight restriction. The NEW and Improved “Sport Aviation” is what pilots where asking for over half a century ago. It just took a LONG time getting here.
The future of Aviation has a bright side, Textron and Arcline (Hartzell Aviation) may not be able to keep up. AvBrief will be reporting on more of the ‘Brand New Modern Aircraft’ heading to manufacturing. These New ASTM Sport Aircraft are using many parts and components outside the ‘Standard’ Airworthiness Certificate Commercial Aircraft parts suppliers.
Good on Continental and Arcline for bringing the ownership back home. We’ll know in time if their old corporate barge can keep up with the smaller modern more nimble innovators.
Well said!
You make it sound like they did this for moral or patriotic reasons. It’s a private equity buyout, they don’t do anything for any reason other than to extract value.
True, however we can be glad that Continental is no longer owned by a Chinese company.
But it will be an American company extracting the value!
So we trade Chinese ownership for what I assume is private equity instead? I’m not sure which is the lesser of the two evils…
The economic activity surrounding Arcline’s profits will be mainly in the US. Definitely preferable to foreign ownership.
Conti sold in 2011 for $185 MM Cash.
Well, Arcline Investment Management is a private equity firm, so this might be even worse news than the previous Chinese buyout. Has anyone kept track of engine costs over the years enough to graph it? I’m curious what it looks like and how this will affect it. As a data point for the future, currently the cheapest O200 on airpowerinc’s website is a rebuilt 0200A48BR at $42,909.00 and the only wayback machine snapshot I could find of their site that isn’t broken or without a price has the same engine type listed at $39,612.00 in December 2023.