One Aviation

The One Aviation Corporation, stylized as ONE Aviation, was a company formed in 2015 to merge the aircraft manufacturers Eclipse Aerospace and Kestrel Aircraft. The company had its headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.

One Aviation produced the Eclipse 550 very light jet from 2015–2018, and was developing the Eclipse 700. It was also developing the Kestrel K-350 turboprop aircraft but suspended the design in 2017 due to financial and legal challenges.

In October 2018, One Aviation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while it underwent operational restructuring. However, in February 2021, it was reported that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case was unsuccessful and had been converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation process.

Alan Klapmeier, the former CEO of Kestrel, and before that, Cirrus Aircraft, was named as the first CEO of One Aviation, with former Eclipse Aerospace CEO Mason Holland as Chairman.

The company initially produced the Eclipse 550, which had been in production at Eclipse Aerospace, and intended to complete certification of the Kestrel K-350. One Aviation had a unified management and business operation along with a single supply system and marketing and sales team, but the two previous manufacturing lines continued at their then-current locations: Albuquerque, New Mexico and Chicago, Illinois for the Eclipse, and Superior, Wisconsin and Brunswick, Maine for the Kestrel.

The merger of Eclipse and Kestrel to form the new company was announced on 15 April 2015 at the AERO Friedrichshafen aviation trade show.

In 2016, One Aviation announced that it was devoting its resources to developing an improved version of the Eclipse 550, the Eclipse 700. The company suspended the Kestrel K-350 project and in March 2017 announced that it would phase out Eclipse 550 production, to concentrate on the EA700. The first testbed for the aircraft's new wing was flown in September 2017, mounted on an existing Eclipse 500 fuselage.

In October 2017 the state of Wisconsin announced that it would commence legal action against the Kestrel Aircraft division of One Aviation for failure to repay US$4M in loans, plus more in tax benefits, given to the company since 2012 to develop the K-350. Kestrel had repaid $865,490 of the $4M but had missed all payments since November 2016. $20 million of state-backed tax credits were tied to the creation of 600 jobs for production, but only one-tenth of that number were hired and $700,000 was credited. Kestrel received $9 million in federal tax credits instead of $90 million. The state was seeking $3.6 million in payments in April 2018.