This can be verified at any airshow a cluster of people always gather around the composite airplanes. In the late 1950s, composite sailplanes were certified in Germany. The weight savings over conventional structural construction techniques was 40 percent. The airplane was never certified because of financial concerns. Beechcraft built 53 Starships in the late 1980s and early 1990s before ceasing production.
Hybrids combine aluminum and composite construction.
The Safire S 26, Raytheon Premier I, Hawker Horizon, and AASI Jetcruzer 500 are all recent designs that fit the hybrid construction label because of their aluminum airfoils and composite fuselages. The new Eclipse 500 will be manufactured of conventional aluminum construction, apparently because of the preferences of the engineering team hired to head the production effort. This technique used blocks of polystyrene or urethane closed-cell foam that were cut to shape by drawing an electrically heated wire over forms. After the foam was shaped, the skin thickness was built up by applying layers of fiberglass cloth and resin. This method is known as foam-core construction, or the Rutan method.