Search Results for: Citation X

Aerodynamicists seldom earn long obits in the New York Times, but Richard Whitcomb, who died last Oct. 13 at 88, did. He left a conspicuous imprint on the design of modern airplanes. He was responsible for the winglet, the supercritical airfoil — which he designed not on a computer, as would be done today, but […]

Despite the lingering recession, in late November, Gulfstream reached yet another 2009 milestone when company test pilots made the successful first flight of the newest Gulfstream business jet, the ultralong-range G650. The flight was unusually short, just 12 minutes, as the pilots, Jake Howard and Tom Horne, along with flight engineer Bill Osborne, returned for […]

I have been to dozens of new airplane rollouts in the last 30-plus years, and I was amazed when the all-new Gulfstream G650 taxied into view at a rollout ceremony in late September under its own power. That just doesn’t happen. Rollout ceremonies are usually a party to show that the airplane is getting close, […]

At about 8:25 A.M. on Sept. 3, 2007, Steve Fossett took off from a friend’s ranch, about 60 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada, in a borrowed 1980 Bellanca Super Decathlon. A few minutes later, about nine miles south of the airstrip, an employee of the ranch who knew the airplane well saw the Decathlon fly […]

Despite efforts by the National Business Aviation Association and some aircraft manufacturers, little success has been achieved in changing the public’s mind about private airplanes, especially jets. When the CEOs of the big three (well, the diminished three) automakers arrived in Washington, D.C., in three separate corporate jets to claim taxpayer bailout money, you didn’t […]

Russell Meyer, Jr., current chairman emeritus and past chairman and CEO of Cessna, which he led from 1975 to 2003, will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Russ Meyer is largely credited with promoting product liability legislation in 1994, which became known as the General Aviation Revitalization Act. Following passage of that […]

Airframe by Cessna. Engines from Pratt & Whitney. Avionics by Collins. In a world where we all wonder what became of the blue chip companies, these three names are still rock-solid leaders in business aviation. So it is only natural that they would team up to make the Citation XLS, the bestselling business jet for […]

Executive bonuses are at the top of the news’ hit list. And Cessna’s parent company, Textron, has revealed through filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that its CEO Lewis Campbell saw his performance bonus steeply diminish last year. The overall downgrade amounted to a bottom-line pay cut of 16 percent-down to $9.8 million […]

Nature is divergent. Darwin in the Galapagos encountered an outpouring of species, no two precisely alike. Aeronautical engineering seems to go the other way. All the species in a given niche eventually resemble one another. It practically takes a specialist to distinguish one business jet from the next. It was not always so. The early […]

“Okay, push her forward. That’s it, a little more forward pressure.” I do as instructed. The runway appears to be coming up at an alarming rate, filling the windshield inches from my eyes. Since this is a takeoff, shouldn’t the runway be disappearing? I feel as if I’m nosing her over onto the frantically oscillating […]