More questions than answers about QMA Altus Times
Paula Peterson, asst. to editor
May 7 2010

If you're still trying to put the pieces together on the Quartz Mountain/Luscombe mystery, here's another piece to the puzzle:

John Swick, author of "Luscombe's Golden Age" wonders if part of the reason the company didn't sell airplanes was because of product liability.

Swick explained that out of each sale of a new aircraft, 20 to 30 percent of the money received is supposed to go into a product liability kitty in case of a lawsuit. In order to capture the market in its class, QMA's cost quotes were nice and low. Where was room for a contribution to the kitty? Further, why didn't the people in charge know this? Or did they?

Last week a representative for a California aviation company was really interested in buying QMA as a package.They said, this week, that they were willing to pay between $5 million to $8 million dollars for the package. They were wanting to try to pull together a QMA talent team too. But time and cost factors pulled them out of the competition for the Luscombe Model 11E.

The amounts generated by the efforts of the Starman Brothers Auctions and QMA trustee Janice Lloyd are not yet known.