Bellanca Aircruiser
aircraft built by Bellanca Aircraft Corporation
The Bellanca Aircruiser and Airbus are high-wing, single-engine aircraft built by Bellanca Aircraft Corporation of New Castle, Delaware. The aircraft was built as a "workhorse" intended for use as a passenger or cargo aircraft. It was available with wheels, floats or skis. The aircraft was powered by either a Wright Cyclone or Pratt and Whitney Hornet engine. The Airbus and Aircruiser served as both commercial and military transports.
Design and development
The first Bellanca Airbus was built in 1930 as the P-100. An efficient design, it was capable of carrying 12 to 14 passengers depending on the cabin interior configuration, with later versions carrying up to 15. In 1931, test pilot George Haldeman flew the P-100 a distance of 4,400 miles in a time aloft of 35 hours. Although efficient, with a cost per mile figure of eight cents per mile calculated for that flight, the first Airbus did not sell due to its water-cooled engine.
Operational history
The next model, the P-200 Airbus, was powered by a larger, more reliable air-cooled engine.
“Bellanca Aircruiser” enters the record as aircraft built by Bellanca Aircraft Corporation. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bellanca, Aircruiser and aircraft can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bellanca Aircruiser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.