Muncie is home to one of the oldest employee-owned aviation companies in the U.S. For the past 85 years, Muncie Aviation Company has been selling airplanes to customers all around the Midwest. Last year, the Company had its most successful year of sales in their history.
“There’s a lot of history here. We were started by Mr. Ball [of] Ball Corporation. Mr. Ball actually started this business himself,” said Martin Ingram, president and sales manager of the company. “There aren’t too many people older than us.”
Ingram says Muncie Aviation Company is famous worldwide in the aviation industry; It deals with clients all around the Midwest and even as far as the east coast.
“We are the largest (TBM type of airplane) dealer in the world,” said Ingram.
The Muncie Aviation Company works directly with the Delaware County Airport, but Ingram says the company is private and receives no funding from the government.
According to John Stephenson, CFO at Muncie Aviation Company, the company sells three major aircraft models: Piper aircraft, TBM aircraft and Quest Aircraft. The TBM aircraft, which Stephenson considers the company's “bread and butter,” came out with a new model last year that started to bring in attention from buyers.
“It’s kind of like the car business, whenever they come out with a new skin on a new car it tends to sell more,” Stephenson said. “The TBM 930 model is fairly new and seems to be drawing a lot of business.”
Stephenson also attributed some of 2016’s successful year in sales to the American economy and how it seems to be flourishing and moving in the right direction.
“The economy was ripe. People were feeling like the next few years are going to be good years, so they take the risk to go buy a nice piece of expensive equipment like an airplane,” Stephenson said.
The company targets customers who are medium to large business owners because of the high price of an airplane.
“It’s not a cheap thing to buy. It’s not a cheap thing to operate... The guys that buy our aircrafts are typically pilots themselves,” Stephenson said.
Muncie Aviation Company offers customers an easier process to flying compared to the typical commercial aircraft experience.
“They can fly into a place like Muncie airport, then get out of their plane, do what business they have to do, go back and get into their plane and take off. They don’t have to go through customs and all that kind of stuff,” Stephenson said.
Despite the Company's smaller local clientele, it doesn’t stop business from coming in all around the United States.
“We have a few customers from Indianapolis, but not much from Muncie. In the airplane business people can fly in from California if they want to. It’s not like it’s limited to that area,” Stephenson said.
Looking forward, Ingram said that the company's mix of products could make for an even more successful year.
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