A Turboprop Built for Trouble

Hardest hit: makers of small, light and midsize jets, such as Cessna Aircraft Co. and Hawker Beechcraft. Cessna, the largest company in the category, has halved its workforce of 16,000 this year because projected 2009 deliveries were cut almost in half, to 275. "I don't think the market will bottom out until the middle of next year," projects Jack Pelton, Cessna's CEO. "Then we will slowly crawl out of this predicament when corporate earnings improve in 2011." The demonization of corporate jets by Congress, prompted initially by the CEOs of the Detroit automakers, has helped kill thousands of jobs. The corporate-aviation market provided 1.2 million high-wage jobs in the U.S. before the financial crisis.

Quest can fly above that storm. David Voetmann, along with aircraft designer Tom Hamilton, hatched the idea for the company in 1998. A former pilot who flew relief and medical-evacuation missions for a host of organizations in Africa, Voetmann realized in the '80s that someone had to develop a new bush utility plane, since refurbishing engines of old models like the Beaver was no longer cost-efficient. So he partnered with Hamilton and began tapping on the doors of nontraditional investors: missionary-aviation organizations. His hope was that they would provide seed money in exchange for Kodiaks at cost.

About 15 organizations, including Mission Aviation Fellowship, New Tribes Mission and JAARS, put up the financing to develop the prototype and created a trust to start product development. "It was a completely novel idea born out of the fact that I didn't want to raise venture capital and lose equity control of the company, nor did I want to have to pay back high-interest loans and executive salaries," Voetmann says. "Honestly, our aim was not to make money but to find a way to help others," says Hamilton.

What a crazy idea; he might make money anyway. There is a real need for a bush turboprop to be built with the latest aerodynamic and engine technologies. Organizations serving populations in crisis in developing countries need a plane that can operate safely on short dirt airstrips. The Kodiak, with its small wingspan of 45 ft. (15 m), advanced flap technology and high power-to-weight ratio, can land and take off in less than 700 ft. (210 m) and climb at a rapid 1,700 ft. per min. (520 m per min.). The Kodiak can be retrofitted for other uses such as border patrolling, hauling emergency equipment and carrying military paratroopers. That's why the British army and the U.S. Department of the Interior are also customers.

Aviation executives can't help feeling inspired by Schaller's appropriately named Quest. The industry is marked by trailblazers who defied the odds. Clyde Vernon Cessna, a farmer whose imagination was sparked by a flying circus in Oklahoma City, launched his company just before the Great Depression; Cessna certified two of its monoplanes on Oct. 29, 1929, the day of the Crash. It takes vision and the right flight plan for any venture in this field to get airborne. Schaller might have both.