While much of the country will be absorbed by the events in Washington, Tuesday, a bankruptcy court in Delaware will be hearing arguments for and against the purchase of Eclipse Aviation by a company owned by its current chairman. The hearing into the proposed sale of the company to a Luxembourg-based subsidiary of ETIRC Aviation, owned by Roel Pieper, was scheduled to wrap up on Friday but not all the testimony (much of it in opposition to the sale) could be heard. Since Monday is a holiday, the proceedings were set for Tuesday. According to KRQE the disposition of 30 aircraft already in production is one of the stumbling blocks.
The judge is being asked to decide if the partly-built aircraft are part of the deal or whether the eventual owners, who have paid deposits on them, will get them when they’re finished. Meanwhile, local and state politicians and business leaders are fretting over whether the millions of dollars in incentives and infrastructure improvements they’ve provided will be lost, should the reorganized company decide to move from Albuquerque. “We all felt it was going to be a great success story,” City Councillor Ken Sanchez told reporters.” Those are some of the risks we take as policy makers; unfortunately in this particular case, it didn’t work to our favor.”
