Successes and plans for the future

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Ultralights Shark (shark) of the Czech-Slovak society Shark Aero they have gained huge fame in their 15 years of existence and now roam the skies all over the world. Paradoxically, their success was started by the financial crisis in which the company came Vladimir Pekar which makes a living by producing aircraft components, lost its key customer – the Austrian company Diamond Aircraft – and had to quickly reorient itself.

Pekar has been thinking about the development of a “shark”, i.e. a fast and elegant ultralight, since the beginning of the new millennium. In 2005, he began its development together with chief designer Jaroslav Dostál, designer Peter Zelman and aerodynamics expert Jiří Svinka. When the Lehman Brothers bank collapsed and triggered the global financial crisis, the first “shark” prototype was in the world, and Pekár bet on its further development.

In the past, Czechoslovak ultralights had a very good reputation abroad thanks to their long-standing aviation and engineering tradition. However, the bet on the production of an ultralight aircraft was still a very big risk, because it takes a lot of time and money to carry out a prototype through all the certifications to serial production, and it is not certain that a small company will survive until then.

It took several years for the company to break even. The development alone cost tens of millions of crowns. “We have been producing at a loss for a long time due to high investments. In 2022, we produced one plane a month, which broke even financially. We are now producing two planes a month, and we are already in positive numbers. Every year from now on, we want to add one plane a month. In 2024, we intend to produce four Sharks per month,” reveals the plans of the founder and head of the Czech-Slovak company Pekár.

Customers who come from at least the upper middle class buy ultralights mainly for fun. They enjoy flying, traveling and getting from place to place quickly and without waiting at a classic airport.

Lawyers, doctors, top managers, former pilots and businessmen appreciate the fact that with a flight speed of around 280 kilometers per hour (max. speed is 300 km/h), the Shark can transfer in about an hour of flight to a cycling trip to the Alps or maybe in two hours to their Croatian resort on the island of Brač, with roughly the same consumption as a car.

Jiří Pruša, the former vice president of ČSA and now the publisher of the aviation magazine Flying Revue and an active pilot, bought the Shark because he likes to fly privately on long expeditions and at the same time uses it for his work – mapping and filming airports for the Internet Guide to European Airports. He chose the “Shark” because of its speed, lower consumption and appearance.

“I like the plane for many reasons. It belongs to about the three fastest aircraft in the ultralight category, it has about 15 percent lower fuel consumption than other types of aircraft, so at a cruising speed of 250 km/h I use about 18 liters of gasoline for one hour of flight and the combination of low consumption, high speed and large tanks ( 150 l of fuel) gives the aircraft the possibility of a range of up to 2,500 km without a stopover, which is a top performance for aircraft in this category,” explains Pruša, who last year in Shark, together with co-pilot Eliška Kudějová, beat the world record for the length of a flight without a stopover with a value of 1,919 kilometers ( the previous record was 1036 km).

“It’s very pleasant. People like the plane, and when I land somewhere and look for accommodation, fuel or service, for example, almost everywhere and I always find help,” praises Pruša, who, in addition to the official record, also flew an unofficial record in the Shark last year, namely 2,700 kilometers without a stopover from Iceland to Prague.

But Pruša is not the only one breaking records with a “shark”. Already in 2012, the Frenchman Eric de Barberin set his first speed record with it, and in 2015 he broke it himself, when he reached a speed of 303 kilometers per hour on a 100-kilometer course.

In 2022, only 19-year-old Briton Zara Rutherford flew around the world in a Shark, becoming the youngest female pilot in history to do so.

A few months later, another record was broken by her brother Mack Rutherford with a second-hand Shark, who became the youngest aviator ever to fly around the world alone at only 17 years old.

World records have helped Shark Aero boost its reputation to such an extent that it now faces a paradoxical problem, according to the company’s founder. “The interest is so great that we have to moderate it a little and compare it with production. Pilots now wait a year for the plane, that’s fine, but if they wait longer, it’s a problem and we risk losing them. Customers buy ultralights as toys. They want to play for their money now, not wait. We have to adapt to it,” explains the “problem” of Pekár’s success.

He himself has adapted to the company almost his entire life since the beginning of production. He works 14 hours a day and 10 on the weekend. “I wanted to make the best ultralight in the world, the dream of every pilot who would enjoy flying in it. We are at the top of the world, so I have what I wanted and I can be happy, but I have to pay a high price for it – a mortgage in the form of those 14 hours of work a day. The mortgage will still be long, I’m guessing another 20 years,” states Pekár.

According to him, he has to solve problems in production every day, but according to him, the biggest ones are with finding good employees. “Business stands and falls on good people. First, it is difficult to find good experts, and then the next step is to have employees who are willing to take responsibility. I experience the biggest problem with this, so that people take the cause as their own, see it through to the end and don’t expect someone else to vouch for them,” he states.

According to him, aircraft production in general is not for normal people, but for fools who want to try something new and persevere. This year, the company participated in the trade fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany, where it presented two novelties – the so-called flap-in-flap, which reduces unpleasant turbulence, and a four-stroke engine with a turbo, which increases engine power, which will be appreciated by pilots both at altitudes with thinner air and on longer flights distance.

In the future, in addition to increasing production, the company is planning to focus more on the American market, where the new Mosaic category is currently being discussed, which should, among other things, have much higher weight limits than the current Czech airplanes up to 600 kg. “It’s not yet clear what will be approved or how the local aviation authorities will react to it, but I see a huge potential, which we want to be ready to use when the time is right,” says the head of Shark Aero, whose company now exports its production to 25 countries and New Zealand will be added in May.

On his own, he expects that when the company sells 1,000 airplanes and the annual production capacity is one airplane per week, he will allow himself to go on a boat to Croatia for a month. “I think I’ll start it between eighty and ninety, and I’m really looking forward to it,” he adds.

According to the chairman of the Association of Sports Aircraft Manufacturers (AVSL) Jan Fridrich, there are about 50 companies that manufacture light aircraft in the Czech Republic. According to him, their annual production is around two billion crowns and 90 percent of the production is destined for export. (According to LAA, small aviation revenues are CZK 1.2 billion.)

Who manufactures ultralights in the Czech Republic?

In the world, for example, the Swedish company Blackwing with the aircraft of the same name, the Risen aircraft of the Italian company Porto Aviation Group, the German Icarus aircraft of the Icarus Comco company, the Italian company Tecnam with the P92 Echo and P96 Golf aircraft or the Slovakian company Aerospool with Dynamic ultralights are successful in the production of light aircraft.