A Wyoming inheritance

Aviat is a company built from inheritances. Founded in 1991 in Afton, a small town in western Wyoming, it drew on the history of the local Call Aircraft Company and took over the product lines of Pitts and of Christen Industries, the firm that had owned the Pitts rights and the Christen Eagle aerobatic kit. In 1995 businessman Stuart Horn bought it and gave it the name Aviat Aircraft Incorporated.

Stinkers and Huskies

Its most famous product is older than the company by almost half a century. Curtis Pitts flew his first aerobatic biplane in September 1944; his cartoon-skunk Stinkers grew into the S-1 and S-2 Pitts Special, which dominated world aerobatic competition in the 1960s and 1970s. Aviat builds the certified versions and still sells plans for the single-seat S-1S. Alongside it is the Husky, designed by Christen from 1985 with CAD software, first flown in 1986 and the only all-new light aircraft to enter US series production in the late 1980s.

Keeping old names flying

The Husky became the steady earner: more than 650 had been sold by 2008, flying on wheels, floats and skis for fisheries patrol, pipeline inspection, glider towing and border work; the Kenya Wildlife Service has used seven to watch over elephant herds against poachers. Aviat also bought the rights to the Globe Swift in 1999, a plan delayed by a lawsuit, and rebuilds Cessna 150s and 152s as the Aviat 150 and 152.

工場

• Afton works · Afton, Wyoming — Former Call Aircraft site

人々

• Stuart Horn · owner from 1995
• Curtis Pitts · designer of the Pitts Special