The PZL thing is an interesting dilemma. They offer engines at about what they're worth (versus Lycoming and Continental, who offer them at 3-4 times that) because they can. They can because they a) have low labor costs and b) don't have to pay as much as the engine costs to build (or more) in liability insurance. They are safely out of reach of someone who sues because their Daddy ran his airplane out of gas with a Lycoming engine, and because Lycoming failed to build an engine that would run on air.
Their certification costs are lower, too, because what the FAA can actually do to cost them money has certain geographic limitations. It's amazing how the government will twiddle with your factory if it's just an expense-accounted two-hour flight away. If it's in Poland, well, that's a less popular boondoggle. That's the good news. The bad news is that the whole operation is also out of reach of the customer needing support, or the North American distributor needing support, and of a lot of the recourse we've gotten used to. And it's subject to the vagaries of the Eastern Bloc in an emerging (or retreating) economy. The unfortunate thing is that the economic and legal climate in the US effectively removes the option of building good, reasonably priced, aircraft engines in the here. So PZL doesn't even have the option of opening a factory in Ohio. That's a damn shame. Greg
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