Overview
Velocity Aircraft is an American kit-aircraft manufacturer based in Sebastian, Florida, that builds composite canard-pusher airplanes for the Experimental Amateur-Built market. Founded in 1984 by Dan Maher and family-owned, run by the Swing family since 1992 (aside from a 2008 to 2010 interval under outside ownership), Velocity took the moldless-composite canard concept popularized by Burt Rutan and refined it into a wide-cabin, side-by-side cross-country airplane with retractable-gear and turbocharged options and its signature gull-wing doors. The company remains in production and family-owned, with several hundred airframes flying across its Velocity XL, SE, and V-Twin lines.
Heritage
The Velocity descends from the Rutan VariEze and Long-EZ school of canard homebuilts, the moldless fiberglass designs that helped popularize composite homebuilding in the late 1970s. Dan Maher first flew the Velocity prototype in October 1985 and introduced it at Sun ‘n Fun in 1986. Scott and Duane Swing bought the company from Maher in 1992 and drove its development, adding the enlarged XL airframe, retractable gear, and the five-seat and twin-engine variants. The business passed briefly to the Rocket Racing Composite Corporation in 2008 before the Swing brothers repurchased full ownership in 2010; the Swing family runs it today from Sebastian with a small workforce.
Design Signature
Every Velocity is a canard pusher: a small foreplane ahead of the cabin, the main wing aft, and the engine mounted behind the cabin driving a pusher propeller. The layout puts the propeller and its noise behind the occupants, is intended to reduce the aerodynamic-stall risk associated with a conventional wing, and frees the nose for a roomy cabin. The airframes are composite fiberglass, the cabins are unusually wide (about 47.5 inches across the shoulders) and reached through upward-swinging gull-wing doors introduced in 1995, and the larger models offer retractable gear and turbocharging. The result is a family of fast, comfortable, distinctive-looking cross-country airplanes that fly differently from the Cessnas and Pipers most pilots learn in.
For Owners
Velocity sells airframe kits, not finished airplanes, and supports builders through a factory builder-assist program at the Sebastian plant where much of the airframe can be completed alongside factory staff. Most Velocities are Experimental Amateur-Built: the original builder can earn the Repairman Certificate and perform the condition inspection and maintenance, which lowers operating cost, but a buyer of a completed example is acquiring one specific airplane whose quality reflects its builder, so a type-experienced pre-buy inspection is essential. The canard layout and higher approach speeds reward type-specific transition training, and an active owner community supports both builders and second-owners.