Delivery. And a long story....

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nworthin
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Delivery. And a long story....

Post by nworthin »

So, my DA62 (62.180) finally arrived (June 28). What a long, weird, journey it's been. And, it's not over.

I signed the purchase agreement in March of 2021 with a promised delivery of November of the same year. I'd been shown a plane with a paint scheme exactly like what is attached. I really wanted something a bit different. Like candy apple red. With flakes. I soon discovered that working through Canada for a plane being built in Austria was an enormous exercise in frustration. I couldn't get paint samples (eventually I wrangled a set under pain of death to return them) and then when I asked whether other colors could be used I got a lot of confused and confusing commentary about radar attenuation and heat dissipation. In short, the answer was "No". Eventually, I gave up and said just give me a plane like the one I saw demoed except painted Sapphire Blue for the top color.

Come late October, I get the call that the delivery will be late and will run over into February due to Covid related labor issues and parts supplies in Austria. Since I had hoped to have the plane delivered in the calendar year for tax reasons, they offered to sell me a used DA42, deliverable in November, that I could fly for a couple of months and then exchange dollar for dollar for the DA62 once it was ready. I have to say, I felt that Diamond Canada and Premier KFXE were thinking creatively and trying to do the right thing by me. And, it was clear that Covid was affecting all sorts of things so I was sympathetic. I agreed and closed on the DA42.

During all this time, I kept asking for photos. In late December, I was asked to join a video conference. The topic was mysterious. On this call, I learned that -- good news -- my plane was painted in the paint scheme I had asked for but -- bad news -- it was painted in the wrong color. My options were, take it as is or get in line for one coming off the line later. I wasn't especially happy with the color but I didn't hate it so I decided to just accept this situation.

In late November I was advised that there were problems with the "interim" DA42 and it couldn't actually be delivered until January. Since, at that point, I was expecting the (wrong color) DA62 in February, I said, "just keep it until the DA62 arrives". This saved me getting insurance in place, doing transition training in a plane that's very like, but not exactly alike, the DA62.

In late January, I watched Flightaware with great expectation as I tracked *my* DA62 as it made its way across the Atlantic. In early February, I was invited to another mysterious conference call with the heads of Diamond Canada and Premier. It's then that I learned that "my" DA62 had arrived in Canada with distorted, bulging, wings near the leading edges. At the time, the cause was unknown.

I asked what the options were. They were:

1. Diamond would *repair* the wings and deliver the plane in May or June with a log book entry that would read "wings repaired". That was an obvious no-go.
2. Diamond had a pair of wings in inventory that they could paint (in the wrong color!) and mount. The log book would read "new wings installed". Less bad than the first option but still not acceptable.

In the end, Travis Peffer, CEO of Premier, worked an arrangement that would let me fly 62.180 with the "new" wings and then let me trade this aircraft in on a new DA62 to be delivered in mid-2023. I will pay a per hour fee for any flight hours but I will get a new plane with no blemishes on the log book and painted the way I want. Travis and, I believe, the executive team at Diamond Canada, genuinely took responsibility for this sequence of problems and worked hard to make it right for their customer. I'm not really happy having had to wait this long but I do feel Diamond and its dealer took responsibility for their mistakes.

Since I expect it will be asked, the diagnosis for the bulging wings was water in the TKS tank that went into the feeder lines in the wings and expanded when frozen. How it got there is anyone's guess.

So, what did I learn here? Well, as is often the theme of many posts here, Diamond makes a great product and the people involved really care but their industrial process, procedures and communications protocols are sadly substandard. I really hope they get that fixed....
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dmloftus
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by dmloftus »

WOW!
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Colin
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by Colin »

I understand the goals of the new owners and if I were them I would be really concerned about the possibilities of meeting them.
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nworthin
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by nworthin »

Colin wrote: Thu Jul 07, 2022 5:31 pm I understand the goals of the new owners and if I were them I would be really concerned about the possibilities of meeting them.
Not sure I understand your comment.

I think you are saying that they (the new owners of Diamond) should go out of their way to reach out to buyers of their products?
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by Chris »

I think Colin is saying that the sales/production goals are going to be hard to meet when there are so many issues/delays being reported by new purchasers.

Major downer on the TKS system issue that caused damage to the wings. I wonder if the system was used during the ferry flight and somebody messed up during refilling. I wouldn't expect water to be in the system when it comes off the line.
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Charles
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by Charles »

Wow. When I worked for aircraft engine companies, I learned first hand that one of the biggest profit eaters is COPQ (Cost of Poor Quality). Whenever a quality issue like the ones described here happened, the quality system would automatically trigger a funded project to assess root cause and implement corrective actions to prevent re-occurrence. Here, Diamond must have lost a big chunk of the expected gross margin on that plane.

That being said, quality issues detected before delivery are typically far less problematic than those detected in the field...
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by photoSteveZ »

Norm, my DA62 delivery story is similar, albeit without the defective wings and without the offer of another new DA-62 off the line in 2023. And, like your story, it’s not over yet.

Somebody in London forgot to check the box to tell the production team that 62.C041 was ordered with a custom paint scheme. Since they painted the right base colors, in (nearly) the right places, and didn’t apply the striping and registration until after flight test and CofA issuance (long story), we didn’t realize they’d screwed up until they sent completion photos a few days before the scheduled delivery flight, eight months after the originally promised delivery date. Someone at Diamond must have come to the belated realization that they were supposed to have painted a custom scheme: the hastily applied striping bore a nodding resemblance to the design I’d submitted—and that Diamond had approved—many months prior.

But the striping wasn’t very close to the submitted scheme and it didn’t work with the base paint cut line (which itself didn’t match the submitted design), so I had them remove the most egregious of the striping and took delivery of the plane with the promise that Diamond Canada will pay for the scheme redesign, to work harmoniously with the as-painted cut line between top and bottom base colors, and for the application of new striping at a later date.

Even in its current, unfinished state it’s still a good-looking paint scheme and it gets plenty of compliments: but it’s not what I dreamed of and waited so long for.

By the way, that same DA42 was offered to me, too, probably after you refused it. It didn’t make sense for me, either: another long story. Full marks to Premier for their support through the process.
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by Colin »

The current owners are Chinese. From my reading of James Fallows' reporting on aviation in China there are no fully private entities in the space, so all of the Chinese-owned aviation companies you are reading about are, in some sense, owned by the Chinese government. They are a play to leapfrog the development of a training environment (and possibly small GA environment) in China.

The entity that bought Mooney started development of a single engine trainer with a Continental diesel in it. I saw the flying prototype in SoCal (they were very interested in the DA42 and asked if they could take off the cowling to see the cooling. I let them take off the upper portion in exchange for a tour of the shop building the plane). Ultimately I believe they figured out that Mooney Aircraft was not a company that could ramp up to build hundreds of planes for the growing nation and its funding appears to have vanished.

If I were the fellow who had been sent in to observe DAI, I would be alarmed at the inability to deliver a single plane without issues. I liked reading Charles' post, because that's what has to happen. But I'm pretty sure creating a company that CAN do the work requires some more capital expenditure. Tesla is the only company I have watched recently to see how this works (and, obviously, they have all sorts of growing pains). But when you have a $2m product and you can't get one to a customer without a 20 month wait it feels like there are quite a few opportunities for improvement. And it sure doesn't feel like a company that could supply the planes needed for training a nation's worth of pilots.

Maybe they are studying the production line and duplicating it over in China. There is no information I've seen about those efforts.

(As far as I know, China owns: Cirrus, Diamond, Mooney, Icon, Austro, and Continental. I assume they have looked closely at Garmin. They are forbidden from owning any portion of a defense contractor, so a bunch of companies are removed from the list of possibilities.)
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by MackAttack »

Defense contractors like Textron are off the list. But that wouldn’t stop Textron from selling the piston business to a Chinese company with a licensing agreement and a servicing agreement to still be the factory service centers and consultants. Such an outcome would not surprise me in the least.

Oddly enough, my 62 delivery date was supposed to be by 9/30/2022 and not surprisingly, that was pushed back to December 2022. But recently, Premier called and said Diamond had moved it back up to November 2022 (and I just sent them my paint scheme(s)). Diamond would not do any custom color schemes but am still waiting to see if anything I sent them will result in an up charge from the cost of metallic paint.

I can see the frustration of the OP but it does appear that both Diamond and Premier worked hard and communicated with you to find a solution that worked. There’s a 62 in that top color that was recently delivered to my home airport, and another pilot who purchased a DA42 with the “dollar for dollar” deal that you mentioned. He may decide to keep his 42 (he seems to love it) but we will see. They are not the best communicators in the world but they do seem to desire delivering a product (ultimately) that meets your satisfaction. If you go to the Cirrus forum, you’ll also see some delivery horror stories… and in fairness, I would expect some percentage of issues when you are basically hand-building a bespoke, $1.6 mm machine …

In any case, congrats to you! I’m very much looking forward to my delivery. And I’m sure I will be on here bitching about one thing or another … *laughing*. We wouldn’t be pilots if we didn’t do at least SOME bitching, right??

Two quick ending points: First, you should have started your post with “What a long, strange trip it’s been!” And gotten some Grateful Dead street cred!

Second, all of our first-world-problem bitching (which I do regularly myself!) reminds me of the Joe Walsh lyric: “I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do - life’s been good to me so far!”
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Re: Delivery. And a long story....

Post by Charles »

I should add that US aerospace companies are not immune to quality issues. Here's an interesting read: https://airinsight.com/happy-birthday-g ... rs-part-1/ https://airinsight.com/happy-birthday-g ... ay-part-2/ I was an exec at Pratt during those years.
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