Eclipse Aerospace moved closer to bringing its Eclipse 550 very light jet to market with the receipt of an amended production certificate (PC) covering final assembly, test and certification.

Cessna Aircraft continues to face weak demand in the first quarter, but expects to see improved results as the year continues, an industry analyst reports. And, the analyst expects as much as a 50% increase in business by 2015. Citing defense uncertainty and continuing sluggish metrics in the business jet industry, analyst JPMorgan downgraded Cessna parent Textron from “overweight” to “neutral.” At the same time, though, JPMorgan sees recovery in the next few years in the business jet market and says “this tantalizing upside … makes our downgrade difficult.”

The Aircraft Electronics Association released the first of what is to be an evolving series of avionics market reports, finding sales by 19 manufacturers reaching nearly $6.3 billion in 2012. The initial report, presented during the opening ceremonies of the association’s 56th annual AEA International Convention & Trade Show at the MGM Grand Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas, is designed to provide a picture of the value of the general aviation avionics market.

Air traffic controllers are anxiously shifting duties and realigning workloads as they prepare for rolling furloughs beginning April 21 and the closures of up to 149 contract air traffic control towers beginning April 7. “It’s going to be rough in a month from now,” says Jim Marinitti, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) representative at the Miami Tower and Terminal Radar Area Approach Control (TRACON).

Manfred Bischoff, who heads Daimler's supervisory board, first told me about 25 years ago that the French government should abandon its stake in Aerospatiale Matra, the predecessor of EADS aerospace/defense group's French arm. Bischoff was then chief financial officer of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and, like most of his German colleagues, firmly believed the time was right to give the private sector some long-overdue freedom and suppress cumbersome political interference. Although he was convincing, he could not persuade his French counterparts to act accordingly.

Lawmakers came up with a budget penalty bad enough to prompt themselves to deal with taxes and entitlements. Until now, the consequences of the $85 billion budget penalty known as sequestration were largely an academic exercise, but the looming closure of FAA contract towers is already making that tangible (see p. 18).

A new NASA mission to bring an asteroid closer to Earth in time to meet President Obama's goal of landing humans on one by 2025 would do more than bring the mountain to Mohammed. It also would add relevance to some of lawmakers' favorite NASA programs—the Orion crew vehicle, heavy-lift Space Launch System and commercial human spacecraft. NASA's fiscal 2014 budget request will include $100 million for the mission to find a small asteroid, capture it with a robotic spacecraft and bring it into range of human explorers somewhere in the vicinity of the Moon.

A backlog of foreign repair station applications created by a byzantine U.S. congressional mandate is forcing airlines to reconsider both expansion and contract maintenance strategies, because desired stations don't have FAA-approved shops to work on U.S.-registered aircraft. (Credit: Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings)