Cirrus Aircraft (booth 2669) insists it is moving forward with its SF50 Vision personal jet program despite laying off some of the engineers assigned to the project and falling behind in returning deposits to customers who have cancelled their orders.
Cirrus chief executive Brent Wouters says the manufacturer continues to look for new investors as a capital infusion is required to bring the Vision to market in early 2012 as scheduled. But he says Cirrus is "making progress in the detailed design phase" and is capable of eventually bringing the Vision to market using its own capital.
"We are meeting milestones but obviously we're not able to invest at the rate we'd like," Wouters told Flight Evening News. "We need additional capital to move it along at the rate we'd like."
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Wouters says Cirrus now has about 100 engineers assigned to the project, down from 140 due to a recent company-wide reduction in headcount. He also acknowledges Cirrus has received about 50 cancellations for the jet, most of which came in several months ago, and has not refunded the deposits yet on about half of these.
But Wouters says Cirrus is "committed to honouring the refunds" and while demand in the Vision is not robust it is picking up with orders again net positive in recent months. The proof-of-concept aircraft, which has so far clocked about 250h, is on display at NBAA this year as part of an ongoing demonstration tour. Cirrus still has over 360 orders for the Vision.
Wouters says Cirrus has validated all the performance specs and only has had to make some small tweaks to the design. He says profits from Cirrus's piston line, which is now turning out six aircraft a week, is helping fund ongoing development of the Vision albeit at a slow pace.
While Cirrus is speaking to several potential new investment partners for the Vision it is no longer consider spinning off the project. Cirrus co-founder and former chairman Alan Klapmeier earlier this year proposed forming a new company with new investors to take over the Vision but Wouters, who all along called the idea a long-shot, said Klapmeier gave up at the end of July because "clearly there wasn't money there".
Source: Flight Daily News
