Aero Vodochody Aerospace a.s.

Aero Vodochody has been building aircraft north of Prague since 1919, and for most of the Cold War it supplied the eastern bloc with its training jets. The L-29 Delfin and then the L-39 Albatros came off these lines in numbers few Western manufacturers matched, around 2,900 Albatrosses alone, at a peak of roughly 200 aircraft a year in the late 1980s. Ownership has changed hands repeatedly since. Boeing held the company from 1998 to 2004, Penta Investments ran it from 2006 to 2021, and it now sits under Hungarian ownership, with the 4iG group holding the controlling position through N7 Holding. Around 1,300 people work at the Vodochody site, which the company also runs as a licensed airport in its own right.

The aircraft business today rests on the L-39NG, marketed as the L-39 Skyfox, a turbofan-powered rebuild of the Albatros concept that took its type certificate in 2018. Hungary signed for twelve in April 2022, eight trainers and four reconnaissance aircraft plus simulators, ground equipment and instructor training, and the first three reached Kecskemet in May 2025. The armed L-159 ALCA remains in Czech Air Force service and has gone to Iraq and to commercial adversary air operators including Draken. With Israel Aerospace Industries the company also proposed the F/A-259 Striker, a single-engine light combat aircraft derived from the L-159 for close air support, counter-insurgency and maritime patrol. Alongside new-build aircraft, customer support and services covers overhaul, upgrades, spares, simulators and pilot and maintenance training for the installed base of more than 11,000 delivered airframes. Five generations of Aero trainers have taught pilots to fly, and the support business is what keeps the older ones in the air long after the production line moved on.

The aerostructures division is the quieter half of the revenue and grew about a quarter in 2025 to roughly 78 million dollars. Aero is a tier one supplier to Airbus for the fully assembled fixed leading edge of the A220 wing, with more than 200 shipsets delivered, and it also makes the A400M rear fuselage fairing and air inlet and outlet systems plus composite water tank installation parts for the A350. For Embraer it has produced wing leading edges, rear fuselage sections, cargo ramps and every door on the C-390 Millennium since 2011. Leonardo takes the central wing box with integral tanks for the C-27J Spartan, complete with engine masts, fuel and hydraulic lines and electrical harnesses. Aircraft Industries has taken over 400 nose and main landing gear sets for the L-410, a programme that has run long enough to become routine. The work is sold as design to build rather than build to print, so Aero carries the analysis, testing, industrialisation and certification support itself instead of machining to a customer drawing. That capability is the reason the company survived three owners and a shrinking trainer market.