Engine architecture drives the debate on new powerplant choices.

While the light-jet market malaise continues to linger, Bombardier believes the market will return to its prior peak levels by 2016 and is maintaining a forecast of 24,000 deliveries valued at $650 billion through 2032. That is nearly the same 20-year outlook the Canada-based company gave a year ago, even though it had predicted the beginnings of a pickup in deliveries in 2013.

Icon Aircraft, the developer of the amphibious light-sport A5 aircraft, is moving forward to ramp up full-scale production with $60 million in new equity funding led by a Chinese investor. The latest investment is the company’s fourth and final round, which Icon says will be enough to demonstrate regulatory compliance, to ramp up production and to begin work on the next aircraft in the model line.

Bell is attempting to reinvent the JetRanger and re-enter a market it left behind five years ago. Juggling development of the Model 525 super medium and the V-280 Valor, the company’s tiltrotor aircraft for the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift requirements, Bell has now added what it calls the Short Light Single (SLS). The helo was unveiled at the Paris air show in a bid to regain market share lost to the Robinson R66 and Eurocopter’s EC120, which filled the void when JetRanger production ended in December 2010.

The long wait for the release of the final aircraft repair station security rule continues as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) extends its review of the new regulation past its 90-day window.

FAA is poised to take steep cuts under the House version of the fiscal 2014 transportation funding bill, but air traffic controller salaries and the contract tower program would be protected. The House transportation, housing and urban development appropriations subcommittee on June 19 approved a fiscal 2014 funding bill that would provide FAA with $11.8 billion (not including Airport Improvement Program, or AIP, funding), $756 million below the current fiscal year and $103.3 million below the level from the automatic sequestration cuts.

VistaJet is continuing its rapid growth with another major order for Bombardier business jets, this time a 20-aircraft deal valued at $518 million that further entrenches the European carrier as one of Bombardier’s biggest business jet customers. The order was one of two that Bombardier announced during last week’s Paris air show. The second, from an undisclosed customer, was for 12 Global 8000 aircraft valued at $804 million.

The Experimental Aircraft Association is paying $450,000 to cover FAA controller expenses, but the association says it is continuing to fight the charges and “this isn’t over.”