Our History
AIR Avionics is actually a brand. The legal entity behind it is Garrecht Avionik GmbH. On the right you will find a brief history of our company.
1998 – Garrecht Ingenieur Gesellschaft has been founded by the two brothers Georg and Johannes Garrecht who have just graduated college.
April 1998 – The first product called “Volkslogger” hit the market. The Volkslogger was an affordable flight recorder, certified for gliding competitions. Evers since then, the Volkslogger was wildly popular with several thousand units sold worldwide.
2001 – Garrecht Avionik GmbH was founded on the mission to become a certified avionics manufacturer.
2005 – Garrecht Avionik received EASA / government approvals for certified avionics system production. The VT line of Mode-S Transponders was released. The very modern and compact design as well as their well known reliability made VT devices a popular choice for thousands of customers worldwide.
2007 – Independently from Garrecht, Butterfly Avionics GmbH has been founded by the two brothers Joachim and Tobias Fetzer as well as Marc Förderer during their time as college students. On a tradeshow event in late 2007 the founders of Butterfly and Garrecht met for the first time.
March 2008 – Butterfly Avionics introduced the “Butterfly Displays” to the market, the first graphical traffic display for FLARM devices. Butterfly Displays have been very popular, several thousand units have been sold ever since.
2008-2012 – Both companies have released popular new products to the market including the TRX traffic receiver series, iOS navigation apps, the AIR Glide series. In a first common research project, Garrecht and Butterfly have worked together successfully.
2013 – Butterfly and Garrecht have decided to operate under the new joint brand AIR Avionics. All sales and support activity has been transferred to Butterfly, common development of new products has started.
2017 – Both companies have merged into a single company under the Air Avionics brand. The leadership team now consists of all 5 initial founders who work in different roles overseeing all operations covering development, production, sales, finance, and service.
2019 – With the AIR Traffic product family in the field of traffic warning, AIR Avionics has won various prestigious awards and at the same time positioned itself among the market leaders in this segment. The new AIR Control Displays in the field of radio/transponder/altimeter for the first time allows the combination of all of these systems into a single instrument with a very small footprint in the panel.
2020/21 – AIR Avionics’ traffic detection technology is also used in the renewable energy sector via the newly founded company “Lanthan Safe Sky”. The AIR COM aircraft radio receives its long-awaited approval. The number of employees at AIR Avionics is growing steadily. The new location in Walldorf with a large showroom is occupied.