The agency responsible for aerospace development in the Philippines is being shut down for not having manufactured a single useful aircraft in its almost 45 years of operation.
"They are supposed to design a plane. It's been 45 years already and they have not designed a plane yet," Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said.
The Philippine Aerospace Development Corp (PADC) was founded in 1973, and is supposedly responsible for the "design, assembly, manufacture and sale of all forms of aircraft."
In the 1980s, the aerospace agency participated in the creation of the first and only prototype of a Philippine light aircraft, the PADC Defiant 300.
With a fuselage made of wood and fiberglass and a Lycoming engine of 300 horsepower, the PADC Defiant 300 made a test flight in 1987, although the project was finally abandoned due to lack of state funding.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the PADC also developed the PADC Hummingbird helicopter prototype, which was considered a copy of Eurocopter's MBB Bo 105, but the project was also discarded as too lengthy and expensive.
