Cessna is on the verge of delivering its first Corvalis after it took the high-end piston single out of production nearly two years ago. We recently had a chance to fly a developmental copy of what will become the new model, the Corvalis TTx, and to Cessna’s credit, the airplane is not new in name only. It incorporates a host of improvements; not the least of these is a new Garmin G2000 avionics suite. When Cessna delivers the first new Corvalis, which it hopes to do later this year, it will likely be the first airplane with the next-generation Garmin avionics installed. That is just the beginning of the changes too.
An Eventful History
Launched in the mid-1990s and certified in 1998 by design originator Lancair, the Corvalis was originally known as the Columbia, after the river that flows through northern Oregon but, interestingly enough, not through Bend, the beautiful central Oregon town on the eastern flank of the Cascade range where Lancair was headquartered and where the airplane was manufactured until 2009.
