Friday's Announcement Anticipates Creation of 200 Jobs MONTROSE – The competition, and the secrecy, are over: German-based aircraft manufacturer Extra (code-named Prospect Thunder) announced Friday that it has chosen Montrose as the site for its new assembly plant and U.S. headquarters.

The much anticipated announcement took place, appropriately enough, on a taxiway at Montrose Regional Airport, the tarmac closed specifically for the high-spirited ceremony.

Two of Extra’s airplanes flanked the speaker’s rostrum under a bright, hot sky. One, a flame-red, single-seat aerobatics model, represented the company’s competitive beginnings 30 years ago. The other – silver, white and black, and inscribed along the fuselage with the words “Spirit of Montrose” – represented Extra’s move into business-class aircraft.

This is the model to be manufactured here on property adjacent to the airport. According to the county’s July 19 letter of intent, it will purchase the property and then lease it to Extra. The county expects to be reimbursed for the land costs by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Today is the engagement,” said Sandy Head, director of the Montrose Economic Development Corp., the public/private organization that has been wooing Extra since January. “We’ve been dating for six months. Today is the engagement. We will do whatever it takes to bring this to fruition.”

The giddy crowd of 100 or more included 58th District Representative Scott Tipton, Montrose Mayor Kathy Ellis, Board of County Commissioners Chair Ron Henderson, County Manager Jess Smith, as well as various city council members, representatives from Region 10, and the Colorado Office of Economic Development.

All had come to hear Extra Aircraft president Ken Keith’s formal acceptance of the marriage proposal. “It’s a fit,” Keith said, and went on to describe the Montrose he had come to know as “gracious, enthusiastic and passionate. You can’t fake this stuff,” he said. “You can’t generate it after the fact.”

He went on to describe the essential passion of Extra’s founder, Walter Extra, a German aviator born in 1954, who knew the first time his parents took him to an airport that he wanted to fly. He trained as an engineer and became the German aerobatics champion. He tinkered with his competition airplane to improve its performance. (He had been frustrated that it was capable of rolling 360 degrees just once per second.) Then he designed and built a plane from scratch. Last year Extra’s 330LC took five of the top 10 places, including first place, at the aerobatics world championships in England.

The airplane behind Keith was Mr. Extra’s latest creation, the EA 500 cross-country model, a sophisticated, carbon-fiber six-seater, with a Rolls Royce turbine engine, designed to compete in the marketplace with small corporate jets and prop aircraft.

Extra’s head of corporate development, Errol Bader provided the details.

“This is the only all-composite, single-engine aircraft made in the world,” he said. Thanks to its super-light airframe, the 500 can afford to have more interior space than its competitors. “And it will be $500,000 cheaper.” (Retail price is expected to be $1,650,000.)

It will require half the take-off and landing distance of comparable metal-frame aircraft, meaning it can use shorter runways around the country. And with a wingspan of 38 feet it is the only airplane in its class that will fit in the average small-airport hangar.

Most attractive of all, Bader believes, is the 500’s fuel efficiency. “This turbine engine weighs less than I do at 209 pounds,” he joked. “The 500 burns 20 gallons of fuel per hour at 16,000 feet. (It is certified to fly as high as 25,000 feet.) That’s less than half our competitor’s 42 gallons an hour. It has a range of 1,600 nautical miles, non-stop. With 172 gallons of fuel at take-off, it will go a lot farther and carry double the weight of any airplane in its class.”

The mystery of Extra’s identity and selection process over, Bader brought down the house with this. “I see in my notes to myself here: ‘Lift green shirt to “Thunderous” applause.’” He held up a T-shirt that read, “We’re no longer Thunder!” And on the other side, “Extra 500 Made in Montrose.”

MEDC vice president Bruce Panter took the microphone following Bader and Keith and said, “I feel like I’m following Led Zeppelin or something.”

He did, however, cause a mini-stampede when he introduced Sharon Watkins of the Colorado Workforce Center, who, he said, “will be taking résumés” as a first step in the hiring process. Extra plans to bring roughly 200 jobs to the Montrose area.