By Carl Chance, Editor, WingsOverKansas.com

It is worthy to affirm Wichita’s Unique position among the aviation industry, where nowhere else you will find the concentration of top-name general aviation aircraft manufacturers co-located within such a concentrated geographic boundary. What the city of Detroit had become to the automobile in the last century, and Silicon Valley had become to the computer-chip, so too has Wichita, Kans. become the nations and the world’s hot spot for aircraft development and manufacturing!

A Legacy

This incredible business journey has seen the Kansas aviation industry get its fledgling start during the late 1800s when the imaginative but unworkable concepts were envisioned by thinkers and dreamers and converted into reality as test aircraft by mechanics, craftsmen, and blacksmiths. It has seen Kansas become the proving grounds for such industry icons as Walter and Olive Ann Beech, Clyde Cessna, Matty Laird, Lloyd Stearman, and Bill Lear, just to name a few. Through the “Golden Age” of Barnstorming and Airracing, the Kansas Aviation connection has always been at the forefront with such names as Amelia Earhart, Art Goebel, Frank Hawks, Benny Howard, and Blanche Noyes. Kansas has also played a significant role as a key component in the “arsenal of democracy,” with su ch intrepid manufacturers as Boeing (Wichita) and North American Aviation (Kansas City, Kans.) building medium and heavy bombers in the heartland. This amazing legacy is sustained even to this day as new names emerge to carry on the tradition of development that set the world standard for excellence in recreational, business, and military aviation.