The General Aircraft Company was an American aircraft design and manufacturing company that was formed in the late 1930s and ceased involvement with aircraft in 1976.

History

The company was established at

Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...

to build an aircraft designed by Doctor Otto C. Koppen, a professor of aeronautics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. The aircraft was the G1-80 Skyfarer, a two-seat cabin high-wing braced monoplane.Orbis 1985, pp. 1935–1936 The company was applied for its first patent, an airplane wing, in 1939. Before the company could produce the aircraft in any numbers the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

intervened, and the Skyfarer programme was abandoned after either 17 or 18 examples had been built. After establishing a factory in Astoria, New York, the company became a manufacturer of the Waco CG-4A troop glider and the interests in the Wayfarer were passed to Grand Rapids Industries. The company announced plans to produce a new

regional airliner A regional airliner or a feederliner is a small airliner that is designed to fly up to 100 passengers on short-haul flights, usually feeding larger carriers' airline hubs from small markets. This class of airliners is typically flown by the r ...

called the GAC-100 at its plant in El Segundo, California in 1968. In 1969, the company bought the Helio Aircraft Company which specialised in building STOL aircraft for use by government agencies in south east Asia. The company ceased to manufacture aircraft in October 1976 when it sold the production rights and assets of its Helio Aircraft division.

Aircraft

References

Notes

Bibliography

* {{refend Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States