AirPino - Multi Purpose Light Aircraft Integrating Rural Pilipinos

The Philippine Aircraft Industry has shown its capability to produce for the many and varied aircraft requirements of the country in the past. It has designed and/or fabricated various aircraft from the 1950’s such as the XL series of the 1950’s, the Islander, the S-211 jet, the Bolkow helicopter, the Defiant 300 and numerous others. As a developing country, the requirements for aircraft is increasing specially given the archipelagic and mountainous geography.

The AirPino Project is the local manufacture of a multipurpose light aircraft that can be used for

1. Rural Air Transport providing for Inter island, Cross mountain, Inter Province transport
2. Agricultural Functions such as rainmaking, aerial survey and monitoring, crop dusting
3. Private Users for executive transport, charter operations, recreational flying, skydiving, tourist transport
4. Promotion of forestry development through aerial reforestation of all bald and denuded mountains, monitoring of illegal loggers and log transport, and firebombing of forest fires
5. Protection of mineral resources through aerial monitoring of large mines and mineral transport
6. Environmental monitoring and protection of  rivers, bays, mine tailings, etc.
7. Government Functions such as liaison, VIP transport, aerial project monitoring
8. Export product to other developing countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia
9. Base for aviation industry development

Required for parallel development is the capability building for the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) for Philippine aircraft certification. This is necessary for the AirPino MPLA to be viable commercially. The CAAP will also have to enter into bilateral treaties with its corresponding organization in other countries to enable the export of Philippine-made aircraft to these countries.

Design Requirements

1. Designed for easy production and easy maintenance using modular construction
2. Plane configured to expedite exports to other developing countries
3. Use of composites for technology expertise development, including possible use of laminated bamboo
4. P10 million per unit bare cost objective
5. Adoption of low cost COTS technology for augmented VFR such as GPS, electro-optics, IPad
6. Preparation for other model configurations
7. 5 seats plus cargo minimum size, to 8 seats