Apparently in response to customer demand, Cessna has increased the range of its new Citation Latitude, announced just four months ago. The bump will give the airplane an extra 300 nm of range, allowing it to connect city dots in a number of cases that it previously couldn’t. The new 2,300-nm range is an impressive figure for an airplane in its price range. Cessna did not say how it had improved the range, though presumably it did the vast majority of that job by adding fuel, something that typically requires an airplane to get heavier in other ways to support the additional fuel weight. In the case of the Latitude, however, Cessna says the airplane will not take a payload hit and that much of the improvement in range came about after wind-tunnel testing revealed the design was more efficient than the company had previously thought.
The Latitude features an all-new wider fuselage with a flat floor with six feet of headroom, a marked improvement over previous Citations. It will also boast all-new Garmin G5000 avionics, a sophisticated cabin entertainment and communications system and a host of new interior features.
Cessna plans for certification and first deliveries of the $15 million jet for 2015.
