2025 was a much better year for Van’s Aircraft than 2024.
The renowned aircraft manufacturer went bankrupt in December 2023, citing “unprecedented supply chain challenges throughout COVID, faulty primer that led to corrosion problems on quick build kits, and problems with laser-cut parts that were manufactured in response to high demand.” The issues combined to create a “serious cash-flow problem.” Company officials said Van’s could not “recover through the normal course of business.”
The company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 16, 2024, setting the stage for a much stronger 2025.
In a year-end review, company officials reported that:
- In 2025, it delivered around 1,200 kits worldwide, which is on par with last year.
- At the same time, work to improve supply chain and production efficiencies have allowed the company to reduce lead times for its most popular kits. For example, non-Quickbuild wing kits for the RV-9, RV-10, and RV-14 are currently on an eight-week lead time, down “significantly” from just a year ago. The RV-14 and RV-10 non-Quickbuild fuselages have a 10-week lead time.
- For Quickbuild components, the company has eliminated its previous backlog and are on track to improve lead times starting in the first quarter of 2026. The RV-10 and RV-14 Quickbuild components are now posting 26-week lead times, with officials noting they started the year at 12 months, well down from the 18-month lead time in 2024.
The company’s best-selling Light Sport Aircraft, the RV-12iS, got a lot of attention in 2025. The company expanded its RV-12iS production line into an adjoining building at the company’s headquarters at Aurora State Airport (KUAO) in Oregon, increasing floor space six times.
“As a result of this upgrade, we turned out 32 RV-12iS SLSA models in 2025, up from 26 the year before, despite the disruptions on the line to move into the new facility,” company officials said in the year-end report. “More importantly, the current facility has the capacity to allow us to double our 2025 output with this footprint.”
They added that more than 120 RV-12iS are part of the fleet at more than 140 flight schools, amassing more than 100,000 training flight hours so far.
Officials added the updated 2026 RV-12iS will be ready for full MOSAIC when the rule comes into effect in July 2026.
Parts Orders
- In 2025, Van’s fulfilled 16,745 parts orders (about 65 every work day), representing a 40% increase for the year.
- More than 600 new stock codes have been loaded into the company’s webstore system to support the RV-15 and the 2026 RV-12.
- In 2025, some 800 obsolete or discontinued parts were cleared from the webstore and the company implemented an improved method of pointing to successor parts, reducing the chances of ordering the wrong part.
- RV-15 builders were the first customers to receive the new “RV Tackle Box” hardware organization. Company officials said that over time they intend to roll tackle boxes out to its legacy kits as well.
The RV-15
Work is spooling up on the company’s new backcountry aircraft, the RV-15, introduced at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2022.
Sales of wing kits began on opening day of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025.
When the staff arrived at the company’s exhibit that morning, they found a line had formed for kit purchases that wrapped around the RV-15 on display.
“As the end of the show approached, sales had greatly exceeded our expectations and they continued strong through the rest of the year,” officials added.
The company began producing parts for the wing kits in the third quarter and established a production line for the fuel tanks, ramping up production in November and December. Wing kit shipments began in December 2025.
Work continues for finalizing the parts and configuration of the horizontal tail, company officials added.
“Unfortunately, Oregon’s notoriously wet weather was even more challenging than usual, cutting deeply into our flyable days to wrap up flight tests with the final tail configuration,” company officials reported. “As a result, tail kits, originally intended to go on sale at the end of December, will instead be offered for sale at the end of January 2026. We are still targeting deliveries of tail kits by the end of March 2026, but we will know more in late January and update customers then.”
Builder Success
There were nearly 100 first flights reported over the year by builders, according to company officials, adding the best month, August, had “more reports than any time since August 2021.”
For more information: VansAircraft.com
Fair take. That said, I’ve been around RVs long enough to know the “magic” never lived in the Osh booth anyway—it lived in the garage. It was in parts that fit, plans that made sense at 11 pm, and airplanes that flew exactly the way Van said they would. That kind of trust doesn’t survive on nostalgia alone—it survives on delivering one kit and one flight at a time. Oshkosh comes and goes. The real test is what shows up in the crate and how it flies five years later.
After going through a massive restructuring and bankruptcy this is definitely commendable. Let’s not forget, however, that this was a company selling over 4,000 kits (per year!) only a few years ago… I had a chance to swing by the Vans booth at Oshkosh and for the first time it seemed like a lot of the *Magic* around Vans was gone. Perhaps that was because of the bankruptcy, forcing many to forgo their deposits in lieu of a price increase. Perhaps it was because a bankruptcy attorney is now running Vans as CEO and the vision is gone. Perhaps its because of all the choice out there now and what MOSAIC will soon bring. I wish them the best of luck but something is definitely missing for me.