Former Cirrus Aircraft CEO Alan Klapmeier’s bid to buy the company’s jet program has failed after the two sides could not agree on a purchase price. Details of the negotiation have not been released, so it is not known how far apart the sides were, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association reported. Klapmeier, who stepped down as CEO in February, said in June he wanted to buy the Vision SJ-50 single-engine jet program and start his own company to finish developing the jet and start producing it. That would have left Cirrus with just its piston line of aircraft. Cirrus CEO Brent Wouters said last week the company is moving forward with detailed design of the jet, a prototype of which has completed about 200 hours of testing. Wouters said other investors interested in getting a stake in the jet program have approached Cirrus since Klapmeier’s public effort fell apart. As of this month, Klapmeier will also be losing his post as Cirrus’ board chairman, the Experimental Aircraft Association reported. That will leave the company’s co-founder with few official ties to it.

A 61-year-old Indiana man died Thursday when the plane he was flying crashed 300 miles east of his intended destination. William Huff was the only person in the Cirrus SR-22, which was on a flight plan from York, Ne., to a small airport near Indianapolis, the Associated Press reported. Controllers lost contact with the plane as it neared its destination, and the plane kept cruising eastward. Two F-16 fighter jets intercepted the plane and tried to contact the pilot but were unable to. Huff’s last transition, requesting a descent from 25,000 feet as his plane neared Indianapolis, was described as “garbled.” The fighters followed the plane for 300 miles, across Ohio until it crashed about 50 miles north of Charleston, W. Va. It is unclear how Huff became incapacitated or whether he was dead in the cockpit prior to the crash.

Cirrus on the hook in $16.4M lawsuit after 2003 crash

A jury has awarded the families of two men killed when their Cirrus SR-22 crashed in Minnesota in January 2003 a total of $16.4 million in damages. The families of the men argued in their lawsuit that Cirrus Aircraft and the University of North Dakota provided training that should have made pilot Gary Prokop proficient in his plane and that the SR-22 was marketed as easy to fly, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. But the pilot’s family said he wasn’t proficient in using the plane’s autopilot because Cirrus’ training program was lacking, and that if Prokop knew how to use the autopilot, the crash could have been prevented. The plane crashed after Prokop took off at dusk in marginal VFR conditions and then flew into instrument conditions, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its probable cause report. Prokop had 250 hours of total time, including 19 hours in the SR-22, with almost all of the rest of his flight time in a Cessna 172. While Prokop had 57 hours of instrument time, the transition training program he completed with Cirrus limited him to VFR flight in his new plane. Cirrus has not decided whether it will appeal the jury’s decision.

The second crash of the Cessna SkyCatcher during spin testing has sent the light sport aircraft program back to wind tunnel testing as engineers tweak the plane’s design. Cessna announced the shift in the plane’s development schedule in a news release during Sun ‘n Fun last week, but did not say how long the plane’s deliveries would be delayed. The plane was once slated to be certified later this year. In September, the first test plane was destroyed during spin testing; the pilot parachuted out safely. In the March accident, the pilot was able to deploy the plane’s ballistic parachute, which then dragged the plane across the ground, seriously damaging it. In between the two crashes, Cessna tweaked the design of the vertical stabilizer.

The news was better for Cirrus Design at Sun ‘n Fun. The company announced that its SR22 models are now certified for flight into known icing. The system uses TKS fluid dispersed along the leading edges of the wings, horizontal stabilizer and vertical stabilizer. This is similar to the older system available on Cirrus’ planes, but which was only designed to help pilots leave icing conditions when accidentally flying into them. The newly certified known-icing system includes LED ice lights and equipment to spread the de-icing fluid across the front windshield and along the propeller blades. Pilots will be able to fly in icing conditions for up to 2.5 hours.

General aviation manufacturers are continuing to struggle, even after many have made substantial cuts in the last four months. Piper Aircraft is shutting its production lines down for one week each month from April through July, requiring all employees to take those weeks off without pay, the company said in a news release. Piper had previously announced two weeks worth of shutdowns and added two more last week. The company has laid off several hundred workers and now has 650 employees. While it has not ruled out further layoffs, it is doing “everything possible” to avoid additional cuts. Cirrus Design, meanwhile, has cut 52 people from its Duluth, Minn., offices. The layoffs affect its engineering, support and administrative departments, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal reported. Despite the cutbacks, Cirrus said recently it is still developing its single-engine jet and the company says it is more healthy financially than it was late last year.

Cirrus Design, already running its production lines at half of their capacity, said it may need to scale back its work week for many production employees in the face of sluggish sales. The company has 100 employees on furlough who are receiving benefits, but it won’t say when those workers will be called back to their jobs, the Duluth News Tribune reported. Cirrus said it would adjust its production schedule from week to week, and that it is leery to lay off any of its workers permanently for fear of losing highly training assembly line employees. Cirrus isn’t the only company slowing down its production lines. Cessna said starting later this week, employees working on subassembly lines will have their hours limited to three or four days per week, the Wichita Business Journal reported. Officials wouldn’t say how many workers would be affected by the changes, which are expected to last at least through March. Other production line reductions are possible, the company said.

Though Cirrus Design recalled 500 production line employees just last week, the company is now slashing 50 positions in other departments.  And another 100 production employees who were furloughed in December may not return to their jobs until mid-April, <a href=”http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/109152/”>the Duluth News Tribune reported</a>. The 50 jobs cut last week were support-related positions in engineering, shipping and receiving. The company said it expects to stay healthy in 2009, as some of its cost-cutting in recent months allowed it to pay off $20 million in debt.  With orders remaining slow, its production lines will produce eight planes per week, half of the company’s typical rate in 2008. And Boeing said last week it would cut 4,500 jobs in its commercial airplane division, <a href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNF8U_Y4P5Yc&refer=home”>Bloomberg reported</a>. Boeing’s order book remains strong, with more than 3,700 planes to be delivered, but the company received fewer new aircraft orders last year and it is looking for ways to cut cost. Few of the job cuts will affect production line employees; Boeing said it would fire some contractors and eliminate other positions through attrition.

True to its word, Cirrus Design is set to bring all but 60 furloughed employees back to work today. The company laid off nearly 600 workers last fall as its sales slowed to a crawl, and it shut down its production line for the month of December, the Duluth News Tribune reported. This week’s recall of 500 employees will bring Cirrus’ Grand Forks, N.D. plant back to full staffing and return all but 60 workers to its Duluth, Minn., facility. Cirrus said those 60 would be called back to work in the coming months. Cirrus can make as many as 16 planes per week, but with orders still slow, officials said its lines would turn out just eight planes per week for the time being. Even at that reduced production volume, it’s good news for Cirrus’ suppliers, at least two of which were forced to shut their own facilities and furlough some of their workers during Cirrus’ month-long shutdown.

Cirrus Design announced last week that its new chief executive is Brent Wouters, who was previously the company’s chief operating officer. Wouters will take founder Alan Klapmeier’s place at the CEO spot, a position Klapmeier has held since co-founding the company 1984. In a news release, Klapmeier said he was stepping down from that position so that he could devote more time to implementing his long-range vision for the company and spend less time on day-to-day operations. Klapmeier will retain his position as chairman of the company’s board of directors. Dale Klapmeier, Alan’s brother and Cirrus co-founder, is keeping his position as vice-chairman of the board. The upper management shift comes as the company announced earlier this month it is pushing ahead with its Cirrus Vision single-engine jet program, though at a slower pace than once planned because of the economic recession.

Cirrus Design revealed new details Wednesday on how fast and how far its Vision single-engine jet will be able to fly. With full fuel, the plane would be able to carry only 400 pounds of payload over a range of about 500 nautical miles at 300 knots. That may sound slim, but the range increases to about 1,000 miles if pilots throttle back and cruise at 250 knots or slower. CEO Alan Klapmeier released the figures, including charts and graphs, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning. With a lighter load and economy cruise of 210 knots, the jet would be able to go more than 1,300 miles with reserves while drinking a relatively modest 33 gallons of fuel per hour.
The Vision, Klapmeier said, is aimed at individuals and people with small businesses who would often be traveling alone or with one other person. The cabin could squeeze in up to seven people depending on how the seats are arranged.

Cirrus laid off 205 people earlier this fall and furloughed all 500 people on its production line for the month of December. While Klapmeier acknowledged the economic slowdown is hurting everyone’s ability to sell planes, he said the Vision jet is still moving forward.

“None of the layoffs or the furloughs have affected the jet program,” he said. “We do believe it is an essential part of Cirrus’ future.”

While the Vision has racked up about 150 flight test hours so far, Klapmeier wouldn’t commit to a delivery timeline, saying that anything before 2011 would be “not likely” and that even 2012 may be too soon. Cirrus has not determined what the final price would be, though officials hope to keep the base model near $1 million.