Ayres Thrush

The Ayres Thrush is a single-seat agricultural aircraft, a conventional taildragger monoplane built to spray crops, and one of the longest-lived types in that trade, with almost 2,000 sold. Leland Snow designed it and it first flew in 1956 as the Snow S-2. In 1965 the Aero Commander division of Rockwell bought Snow Aeronautical and marketed the aircraft as the Ag Commander, later renaming it the Thrush Commander when the Aero Commander brand was dropped. Rockwell sold the rights and the Albany, Georgia factory in 1977 to Ayres Corporation, whose business had grown from fitting turboprop engines to Thrush Commanders, and Thrush Aircraft took over production in 2003. Early aircraft used radial piston engines, while most built since the 1980s are turboprops. This entry sits in the Rockwell International scope because Rockwell built and sold the type for about twelve years.