A700 Certification Shelved

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Six months after buying the assets of Adam Aircraft for just $10 million, AAI Acquisitions is all but pulling the pin on a bid to revive the A700 very light jet program. The company announced Tuesday it’s suspending the certification program on the A700 and canceling plans to hire hundreds of workers at Centennial Airport in Englewood, Colo. “The company has had a strategic readjustment,” spokesman Jan D’Angelo told The Denver Business Journal. Centennial Airport spokesman Robert Olislagers was a little more pointed. “That’s out the door right now,” Olislagers said. “We already went through this drill with Adam Aircraft. It’s obviously very unfortunate. It appears that AAI is getting caught up in the credit crunch out there. It’s a worldwide problem.”

Adam went bankrupt in January after pouring hundreds of millions of development money into the in-line twin A500 and the A700. AAI is a Russian equity company that includes an air taxi company called Dexter among its $3 billion in holdings. In May, at EBACE in Geneva, Dexter announced the purchase of 20 Cessna Mustangs, which was then a direct competitor of the A700.

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