India’s Kingfisher Airlines has missed pre-delivery payments on 38 ATR turboprops, triggering an effective cancellation of the order, ATR CEO Filippo Bagnato reported last month during the company’s annual “state of the company” overview in Toulouse. Nevertheless, the development won’t affect ATR’s plans to progressively increase its production rate over the next three years while preparing to add a larger, 90-seat model to its product lineup.

After rolling 54 aircraft off the production line last year, the company plans to manufacture 70 this year, 80 next year and 85 in 2014, while it projects its turnover to increase from $1.3 billion to $2.0 billion per year. It plans to propose the 90-seater model to its shareholders by the end of this year.

A nonprofit digital rights advocacy organization filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation last month, demanding its constituent agency, the FAA, release information on who is operating or applying to operate unmanned aircraft in civilian airspace. The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges that the FAA “wrongfully withheld” information sought through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “As the government begins to make policy decisions about the use of these aircraft, the public needs to know more about how and why these drones are being used to surveil U.S. citizens,” said EFF staff attorney Jennifer Lynch. The EFF filed the FOIA request on April 13, 2011, seeking information on which specific public and civil entities have applied for and been granted or denied authorizations to fly unmanned aircraft. The FAA acknowledged receipt of the request on April 15, but still has not released the information.

Aircraft charter provider VistaJet plans to step up its expansion of operations across Russia, Asia, Africa and South America. By 2015, the Switzerland-based group also intends to double the size of its fleet to more than 60 jets. VistaJet is in talks with prospective partners in China and expects to have an established operation there by year-end. On January 12, the company reported that it anticipates final figures for 2011 to show a 20-percent increase in passenger numbers and a 25-percent hike in revenues. It also anticipates 50-percent growth in profits. The all-Bombardier operator is progressively taking deliveries of a $2 billion backlog of orders, including a mix of long-range Globals and Challengers. Chief commercial operator Ian Moore told AIN that the main focus of international expansion in the next few years will be the so-called Brinc countries: Brazil, Russia, India, Nigeria and China.

The next decade will usher in a new era of tightened purchase scrutiny for helicopters, according to business and general aviation analyst Brian Foley. He still predicts growing sales of helicopters over the period, “But most–if not all–will require an indisputable, virtually airtight business-case justification. This could prolong the sales process, so smart buyers and sellers will plan further ahead.” Additionally, Foley believes rotary-wing manufacturers need to provide better evidence that fleet replacement or growth is a sounder financial choice than it might appear at first glance. “This could include such things as reduced ownership costs or showing how a new model’s additional utility can cut expenses or increase revenue–all the classical quantitative arguments,” he noted.

Vaisala, a provider of weather-measuring equipment and services, has upgraded the quality of its Global Lightning Dataset GLD360. According to the company, the system now features better location accuracy, polarity classification and peak current estimates. “The significant improvement in the GLD360 data quality due to the vastly improved location accuracy of the global network, combined with its ability to detect approximately 70 percent of all cloud-to-ground lightning flashes, will improve the safety and efficiency of airport operations across the world,” said Nick Demetriades, offering portfolio manager for Vaisala’s airports business.

The FAA has issued a proposed plan to transition the national airspace system (NAS) to a performance-based navigation system that relies on GPS and “area navigation everywhere and required navigation performance where beneficial,” instead of defining airways, routes and procedures using VORs and other legacy navaids. A minimum operational network of VORs and an “optimized network” of DMEs would be retained, and this drawdown would be complete by Jan. 1, 2020.

According to the FAA, 80 percent of the 967 VORs in the NAS are past their service life, and “replacement parts are becoming more difficult to obtain. The replacement of all the VORs would cost over $1 billion.”

The legacy navaids include tactical air navigation azimuth, VOR/Tacan, VOR/DME and non-directional beacons operated by the FAA. The plan would also include developing new Category I instrument approaches using Waas localizer performance with vertical guidance (LPV) procedures, but some existing ILSes “would be sustained to provide alternative approach and landing capabilities to continue recovery and dispatch of aircraft during GPS outages.” The FAA is seeking comments on the proposal on or before March 7 (go to www.regulations.gov).

CitationAir has stopped selling fractional shares in new aircraft and ceased renewals for current fractional-share customers, the Cessna Aircraft subsidiary confirmed to AIN yesterday. Effective last week, “CitationAir will be streamlining our offerings to deliver those products in our portfolio that have demonstrated the greatest customer demand,” CitationAir president and CEO William Schultz wrote in an email sent to employees. “As a result, we are suspending sales of our Jet Share and Jet Access products and refocusing our efforts on our Jet Card and Jet Management lines of business.”

Jet Share was the company’s traditional fractional share program; Jet Access was a jet membership program. Schultz said CitationAir will continue to honor existing contracts until they expire “and then will buy back the shares in accordance with our customers’ agreements.” Customers who want to stay with CitationAir would then need to transition to a jet card product, he noted.

Analyzing the move, business aviation consultant Brian Foley said, “There are now fewer borders between fractional, aircraft management, jet cards and charter.” CitationAir “simply morphed into what the market wants…a successful branded charter/management model,” he said. Fractional consultant Michael Riegel of Fractional Insider views the move quite differently: “Card ownership cannot survive alone” since it is too “cost prohibitive.” He believes this transition will position Cessna “to shut the business down, and quickly, within a couple of years.”