Another month has gone by and the news coming out of Aurora, Oregon (home of Vans) has gotten even worse than before. Long story short, Vans has run out of operating capital and has paused their operations in an attempt to restructure the company. I won't go into how they got here, you can Google it and read all about it.

What that means for me: I've got it comparatively good, I'm just waiting on new parts to replace the laser cut parts that Vans instructed to scrap as well as all the other parts that I want to replace. I had yet to install any of the bad parts so it's just a simple matter of getting new parts and moving on. Unfortunately as of Nov 1, 2023 there is no timeline for when or if that process will happen. To be frank, Vans has a mess on their hands as thousands of builders are affected by this, 1800+ to be exact and a very large number of those builders, including myself, are requesting replacement of ALL of their laser cut parts, not just the ones that their engineering analysis has deemed un-airworthy. This apparently has taken Vans by surprise and they cannot for now honor these requests. They are already cleaning up a mess from quick build kits that had corrosion in them to the tune of millions of dollars. This next issue with the parts has the potential to put them out of business all together.

No one wants that obviously. Most of us just want to get good parts and continue building. Unfortunately the costs of this endeavor get higher and higher every year. If Vans pulls through this (and there's very little reason to think they won't) their kit and part prices will almost certainly increase and not by a small amount. Between the pandemic, supply chain challenges, labor shortages, and extremely long kit lead times, Vans has been selling kits at a loss for a while now. That is easily correct on their end by raising prices or moving to a different payment system. Gone will be the days of locking in your kit price when you order it. Interesting times ahead for sure.

So what am I going to do?? My only choice is to be patient and watch quietly from the sidelines as one of the most iconic names in general aviation on this planet struggles to keep the lights on. The laser cut parts debacle is only one of several major challenges they are facing and in a list of priorities, is not at the top. So the builders log updates may cease for a while. There are some small tasks I can work on which I will continue to log here but if this takes a while to sort out, the project may get put on hold for the winter. Time will tell.