The Butterfly Banty, also called the Kimbrel Banty for its designer, is an American homebuilt ultralight aircraft that was designed by Mike Kimbrel and produced by Butterfly Aero of Oakville, Washington, introduced in 1984. The aircraft was supplied in the form of plans for amateur construction.
The Banty was designed to comply with the US FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles rules, including the category's maximum empty weight of . The aircraft has a standard empty weight of . It features a strut-braced parasol wing, a single-seat open cockpit with a windshield, fixed conventional landing gear and a single engine in tractor configuration.
The aircraft is made from wood with its flying surfaces covered doped aircraft fabric. Its span wing utilizes flaps and has a wing area of . The wings are supported by "V" struts with jury struts and can be folded for ground transport or storage. The cabin width is . The acceptable power range is and the standard engine used is the Rotax 277 single cylinder, two-stroke powerplant. With this engine the standard day take-off roll is and landing roll is
The Banty has a typical empty weight of and a gross weight of , giving a useful load of . With full fuel of the payload for pilot and baggage is .
The plans included detailed parts drawings, a materials list and construction instructions intended to assist inexperienced builders. The designer estimates the construction time from the supplied plans as 500 hours.
By 1998, the company reported that 1820 sets of plans had been sold and 30 aircraft were flying.