The sour economy isn’t dissuading pilots from descending on Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisc., this week. Organizers at the Experimental Aircraft Association are expecting about 100,000 planes and hundreds of thousands more people to come to AirVenture this week, similar to last year’s numbers, the Wichita Eagle reported. GA manufacturers have been hit hard in the last year, so AirVenture this week may not have as many unveilings as in years past. Even still, attendees can look forward to visits from the Airbus A380 and the WhiteKnightTwo in separate appearances later this week. Cessna will give an update on its SkyCatcher program, which was delayed when two of its test planes were involved in spin-related crashes. Hawker Beechcraft has said it will make an announcement, and Diamond is rolling out almost its entire product line. Diamond will have both new versions of the Twin Star on display, along with a mockup of the D-Jet and two D-Jet test planes. The company is also bringing the HK36 motorglider back to the U.S. market and will announce upgrades to the DA20, a two-seat plane used by a growing number of flight schools, it said in a news release.

It has been a rough year for Cessna, as the company cut its workforce in half, closed one production facility completely and axed its most ambitious business jet program to date. So in hindsight, it seemed premature in May — in between rounds of layoffs — when CEO Jack Pelton said the company was still on relatively firm footing, and that it was positioned to deliver more planes than any other general aviation manufacturer. Take two: Pelton last week said the company thinks it has reached the bottom, with fewer order cancellations and more business jet orders coming in, the Wichita Eagle reported. Pelton said deliveries will dip next year, and then start picking up after that. He and other Cessna officials dispelled rumors that have circulated for several months that Cessna’s parent company, Textron, was trying to sell of Cessna. Textron is committed to the Cessna brand and has no plans to unload it, officials said. Pelton acknowledged that the current recession was hitting harder than previous dips, something he called “startling.”

Three months after suspending development on a wide-body business jet that would have had a global range, Cessna last week said it is terminating the program altogether. Cessna planned to invest nearly $800 million in the Columbus jet, which would have involved building a $200 million production plant in Wichita, Kan., as well as hiring 1,000 new employees, the Wichita Eagle reported. The end of the program before construction had even started on a new factory is a blow to the city, which was counting on hundreds of construction jobs and as many as 3,000 new jobs at Cessna’s suppliers. Cessna gave few reasons for why it canceled the Columbus program, beyond broad statements about how the business jet market has deteriorated in the last year amid the deep global recession. In a financial filing, the company said it was taking a $43 million loss on the development of the jet so far. While the company said it might build a wide-body business jet in the future, that program would not be the same as the Columbus. The $27 million jet would have had a 4,000 mile range and would have seated up to 10 passengers, putting it in a league with top-of-the-line business jets from Gulfstream and Bombardier. Cessna said it plans to return $10 million in incentives to Wichita and the county by the end of the month. In a scramble last year to secure the Columbus program, local and state governments in Kansas pledged tens of millions of dollars in incentives for Cessna.

The pilot in a Cessna Grand Caravan crash over the Cascade Mountains in 2007 had been flying above 14,000 feet without supplemental oxygen and was hypoxic but likely didn’t know it, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its probable cause report. The plane was returning to its base near Seattle after a weekend skydiving event in Idaho on Oct. 7, 2007. The pilot and nine passengers, all skydivers, were killed in the nighttime crash. The plane was not on an instrument flight plan and, though pilot Phil Kibler had an instrument rating, he had only two hours of flight time in actual instrument conditions before the flight. In the final minutes of the flight, the NTSB said, the plane climbed and descended rapidly as Kibler was likely looking for a clear skies in between cloud layers. In the last few minutes, the plane likely entered clouds and may have accumulated ice. It entered a spin and crashed in a forested area west of Yakima, Wash. The plane flew as high as 15,000 feet shortly before the crash. At that altitude, the NTSB said, the mental acuity of the pilot and passengers would have been severely impaired, but they may not have had any other symptoms that they were oxygen-deprived. Following that crash, the families of one of the victims sued Cessna arguing the plane could not fly safely in icing conditions. That suit is now part of a larger class-action lawsuit awaiting trial.

The most recent round of layoffs at Cessna, announced last week, means that by August, the company will have just half the workforce that it did in November. The additional 1,300 job cuts will affect all divisions of the general aviation manufacturer, the Associated Press reported. Though CEO Jack Pelton said last month that he thought his company was rounding the bend, officials last week said customers are continuing to cancel orders and even if the economy has reached bottom, it will be some time before aircraft production picks up again. Last week’s announcement of more layoffs brings to 8,200 the number of the people cut from Cessna’s payroll since November. In April, Cessna laid off 2,300 people, suspended development of the Columbus large business jet and shuttered its facility in Bend, Ore.

Cessna’s parent company, Textron, has secured a 10-year, $500 million loan to help it finance business jets for overseas buyers. The loan comes from the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a federal agency, which gives companies the loans so that buyers can obtain financing more easily, rather then going through another bank, the Wichita Business Journal reported. Cessna lost 92 orders in the first three months of this year and has revised downward its production estimates for the rest of 2009 as a result. Company officials hope that with the cash infusion, they’ll be able to help close deals for international buyers more easily, since many prospective aircraft buyers are having difficulty getting loans and financing. Company officials say with the money and an easier path to closing high-value sales, they may be able to save some jobs. Cessna has cut its workforce by about 20 percent since last fall.

While vacation bookings to Cape Cod are off 30 percent for this summer compared to last year, executives at the regional carrier Cape Air aren’t too worried about the drop. The airline, which operates a fleet of twin-engine Cessna 402s, is cutting flights on some of its vacation routes and using the planes to expand service to Baltimore, White Plains and New Hampshire, the Provincetown Banner reported. Cape Air is considering enlarging its Caribbean and Florida service, and may even expand to Cuba if travel restrictions there are lifted. Cape Air hasn’t laid off any of its 700 employees in the current downturn. A bigger concern is what to do with its aging fleet of 402s, which company executives expect have 10 to 15 more years of life in them. With the 402 out of production, Cape Air has been buying up used ones to scrap for parts. The airline hasn’t settled on a replacement aircraft for its fleet, but it wants to stick with a smaller plane like the 402, which seats nine passengers.

Responding to two spin-related accidents since 1998, the FAA is now requiring owners of all Cessna 150s and Cessna 152s to make changes to the rudder – or else install a placard prohibiting acrobatic maneuvers. The AD requires installation of a kit that replaces the rudder stop, rudder stop bumper and some other hardware. It comes partially in response to a 2005 accident in which a student and instructor practicing spins were killed when they were unable to recover from a spin. Investigators found the rudder nut had jammed behind the bumper because a mechanic had installed a part incorrectly. A similar problem occurred in the 1998 accident in Canada. The airworthiness directive gives owners 100 hours of flight time or 12 months, whichever comes first, to make the changes. The FAA expects it will cost each owner $410 in parts and labor to comply with the AD. Though the cost is relatively low, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has objected to the AD all along on the grounds that most problems could be caught by a one-time visual inspection and that the FAA was overreacting. But the FAA argued that the issue is a design problem, not a mechanical one, and that a visual inspection would not be enough.

For all the doom-saying among business jet manufacturers in recent months, the attendance figures at the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Geneva last week told a different story: People are still very interested in business jets. EBACE attracted nearly 11,000 people this year, the third-highest attendance level in its nine years, organizers said in a news release. While manufacturers found reasons to make announcements, there were no unveilings of globe-circling jets this year. Several companies said they were expanding their global service networks and highlighted recent sales overseas. In a speech on opening day, Cessna CEO Jack Pelton said his company has made it through the worst of the economic downturn, according to a Cessna news release. Sales, though sluggish by last year’s standards, remain solid for the company, Pelton said, with 69 jets and 66 propeller planes delivered in the first three months of this year. Cessna has cut 20 percent of its workforce, closed down a production facility in Oregon and suspended development on the Columbus long-range jet program. But Pelton says Cessna continues to spend the same proportion of its revenue on research and development this year as in past years.

Cessna lays off 1,600 more, closes Oregon plant and suspends Columbus jet

Following a round of layoffs in April, Cessna Aircraft Company announced last week it would close down its plant in Bend, Ore., shifting production of the single-engine Corvalis 350 and 400 to a plant in Independence, Kan. The closure of that plant and expected loss of about 200 workers is small compared to the total of 8,200 layoffs Textron announced last week across its various divisions worldwide, Bend’s NBC affiliate reported. Cessna will lay off 1,600 people, including 1,300 Cessna workers in Wichita, Kan., the Wichita Eagle reported. Counting several other rounds of layoffs, Cessna’s workforce will be 44 percent smaller than it was in November. And Cessna said it is suspending development of the $23 million Columbus business jet until the economy improves. A new plant for that jet was expected to create 1,000 jobs by the time deliveries started in 2014. Instead, Cessna is returning $50 million worth of deposits from companies who had placed orders for the Columbus, which was to be Cessna’s largest and longest-range jet yet. Cessna again scaled back its estimates for how many jets it will deliver this year. While it once expected to deliver 535 planes in 2009, it is now planning for just 300 deliveries. In Bend, the loss of the Cessna plant will have a significant effect in an area that is dealing with unemployment rates approaching 20 percent. Other aviation manufacturers in the Bend region include Epic Aircraft and Lancair, as well as suppliers like Precise Flight. Cessna’s Corvalis 350 and 400 models were previously known as the Columbia 350 and 400 until that company went bankrupt; Cessna bought it in late 2007.