Dornier Technology, a German-based aircraft manufacturer, is expanding its manufacturing facilities in Clark with the planned production of a seaplane that will employ up to a thousand workers like aircraft engineers, avionic technicians, airframe designers and mechanical staffs.
Longtime resident pilot and aircraft designer Iren Dornier—grandson of Claude Dornier, a World War II pioneering designer of military aircraft for Germany’s Luftwaffe—is behind the $350-million project, along with foreign partners engaged in aircraft manufacturing
Dornier said his company aims to produce 25-seater pressurized long-range civilian airplane that can be used for cargo and passenger transport and can reach remote and isolated islands. The plane can also be utilized for coast border patrol, anti-drug smuggling, long-range patrol or for undersea pipeline surveillance.
Dornier’s earlier seaplane, dubbed S-Ray 007, is capable of traveling long distance, with an approximate radius of action of 2000 nautical miles. It is equipped with two Pratt and Whitney turbo prop engines.
The seaplane can also be converted into a firefighter airplane.
The Clark manufacturing facility is now fabricating a two-seater multipurpose aircraft training seaplanes for aspiring pilots.
The S-Ray 007 is seaplane that can be operated on both land and sea with short takeoff and landing capabilities and even with two-and-a-half foot waves, Dornier said.
The plane is ideal for surveillance missions and is convertible into an uninhabited air vehicle missions that can be launch in a boat or carriers. It can be transported into a container and can flip its wings 90 degrees inward to save space.
The S-Ray 007 seaplane is based on a 1921 Dornier Libelle aircraft and was redesigned and built using modern lightweight composite structures. It has a price tag of $250,000.
The amphibious multi purpose two-seater airplane, behave like a speed boat in the water, was flight tested recently in Boracay Island and El Nido in Palawan, where it registered an average of 20 liters of aviation fuel per hour. The plane had a fuel capacity of 150 liters.
(Recto Mercene)
