Superior Aircraft Maker To Merge With New Mexico Company

A Superior aircraft company announced this week that it’s merging with another company in New Mexico.

Superior’s Kestrel Aircraft is merging with New Mexico-based Eclipse Aerospace to form ONE Aviation. Kestrel was expected to create 600 jobs, but it has yet to start commercial production of its plane. The company has also struggled paying back loans from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Superior planning director Jason Serck said the city also kicked in around $2.5 million.

“They’ve been actually looking to merge and to maybe purchase other aircraft companies so that they can go back to some of these investors and be more bank-financeable so that they can continue to add to this Kestrel plane,” Serck said.

Roughly 40 people are employed by Kestrel in Superior. Serck said those jobs are expected to remain in the city.