Champion Aircraft

Champion Aircraft was the American light aircraft maker that took over the Aeronca Champion design in 1954 and built its own line of Champion aircraft for sixteen years. It began as Flyers Service Inc., an aircraft maintenance company headed by Robert Brown at Holman Field in Saint Paul, Minnesota, bought the type certificate for the Aeronca Champion from Aeronca, renamed itself for the aircraft and later moved production to Osceola, Wisconsin. Its models all descended from the Aeronca design and carried both an alphanumeric designation and a name, among them the 7EC Traveler, the 7FC Tri-Traveler, the Sky Trac and Challenger, the aerobatic Citabria, the 8KCAB Decathlon and the twin-engined 402 Lancer. Bellanca acquired the company in 1970 and kept building the Champion line at the Osceola plant. The Champ, Citabria and Decathlon designs later passed to American Champion Aircraft, a separate company founded in 1988.