Blaník Aircraft CZ

Blaník Aircraft CZ is an aircraft maker with a design office and production site at Letňany in Prague, Czech Republic. It designs, builds and supports aviation products and also does contract manufacturing.

The company works in the Letňany aviation cluster, which it calls one of the oldest and largest aviation areas in Central Europe. This is where Czechoslovak aviation began in 1918. After World War II, the area produced the all-metal L-13 Blaník glider. More than 2,616 of these gliders went to over 40 countries.

Today the company is the Type Certificate holder for three gliders. The L-13 Blaník is a two-seat, all-metal training glider. The L-23 Super Blaník is an improved two-seat version that first flew in 1988. About 3,000 have been built, and a new series started in 2018 with an improved fuselage, a single canopy, winglets and new avionics. The L-33 Sólo is a one-seat, all-metal glider for leisure flying and aerobatics. About 100 have been built and are flown in the Czech Republic, the USA, Canada and Great Britain. The company's production runs under the direct oversight of EASA.

The company offers three main services. Design covers a full cycle, from the first idea to approved project documents and product lifecycle management. Production makes metal parts and assemblies with many technologies, from idea to finished product. Maintenance aims to keep flight safety and product reliability high.

The shop floor has DMG Mori and Aknel CNC machines and a 5-axis machining centre. The company builds hydraulic accumulators and tests actuators on a controlled pressure test rig. It also builds an electric glider called UrfinJuice.

Customers can use a client zone with spare parts catalogues, lists of airworthiness directives and service bulletins, and an occurrence report form. The company makes and supplies original spare parts and keeps technical documents up to date for its fleet.

Services

• Aircraft design
• Metal parts and assembly production
• Contract manufacturing
• Aircraft maintenance
• Spare parts supply
• Type certificate holder support
• Hydraulic accumulators
• Actuator testing