Just when a little shimmer of hope presented it, thanks to Aerosoft’s Facebook account, it would appear that we were all led under a false pretense that Aerosoft’s CRJ would be close to release.

After releasing a statement yesterday, saying “After a long wait time for the CRJ 700/900, it’s almost time for the first flight!,” Hans Hartman has now approached fans via the forums to tell us this:

Guys, I don’t want to ruin your day, but the CRJ release is NOT imminent. We’re still busy testing and fixing things and we don’t have a release candidate yet. I hope it won’t be much longer but I still can’t give you an estimate because finding and fixing bugs always takes exactly as much time as it takes and not a second less.

This is a real kick in the teeth, considering we’ve been waiting nearly 6 years for this aircraft.

However, despite this, release can’t be too far off, as earlier in June, Mathijs said that we could see the CRJ in “2 or 3 months”. This would still put the date nicely within the September bracket, a year after the initial countdown for release had ‘officially’ began!

We’ll continue to follow the story and keep you updated. In the mean time, why not see some of the EFB previews recently revealed.