Cessna

It’s been almost 20 years now that diesel technology has been a promising alternative for light general aviation, though the adoption of compression engines has taken longer and has suffered more teething pains than its proponents anticipated. I’ve had the chance to fly five different airplanes with four different diesel engines — the original Thielert, […]

Textron, the parent company of Cessna, is moving fast on the development of its sexy straight-wing military twinjet, the Scorpion, which surprised the world with its emergence earlier this year. As evidenced by the following video, Scorpion test pilots have completed the first taxi tests and are getting close to taking the airplane to the […]

The Barrett-Jackson collector car auction occasionally gets an airplane or two on the docket and many airplane manufacturers display their new products on the show grounds. For January’s Scottsdale show, Cessna has donated a nicely restored 1959 model L-19 Bird Dog. Cessna built the Bird Dog on commission by the United States Government as a […]

To say I was looking forward to flying Cessna’s new Citation M2 is a great understatement. As I flew from Austin, Texas, up to Wichita, Kansas, in my Garmin-equipped SR22 to meet with the folks from Cessna, I couldn’t help but wonder how Cessna had made a light jet designed more than 20 years ago […]

The odds of Cessna reclaiming its spot as the maker of the fastest civilian airplane just grew stronger. While Gulfstream one-upped the Wichita-based company when its Mach 0.925 G650 business jet was brought to market last year, Cessna announced last week that it has proven the promised performance capabilities of the Citation X speedster to […]

At its NBAA Convention press conference last week, Cessna showed video of its Scorpion light attack jet undergoing ejection seat testing. It’s explosive footage. As I reported on my Twitter feed (@robertgoyer), Cessna plans to fly the Scorpion this year, a remarkably ambitious production schedule, and testing the seats is a critical step along that […]

Talk about a vote of confidence. Cessna says it will market, sell and install Tamarack Aerospace’s innovative active winglets for the CitationJet family – on the CitationJet through the CJ3 – starting in 2015. Tamarack’s active winglets provide the performance advantages of traditional winglets while adding what the maker calls the “active technology load alleviation […]

The flight deck of Cessna’s Citation Latitude just got better thanks to the addition of autothrottles, an enhancement announced by the company at the National Business Aviation Association Convention in Las Vegas this week. With the move Cessna brings a level of easy operation typical of larger jets into the cockpit of the midsize seven- […]

The Citation Special Olympics Airlift (CSOA) will launch next summer for the seventh time. For 2014, the jets will converge on New Jersey’s Trenton-Mercer County Airport (KTTN), arriving ahead of the games that begin on June 14 and departing the next week after the closing ceremonies on June 21. At this week’s National Business Aviation […]

Stuart Woods, the best-selling author of the Stone Barrington action adventure novels, is moving up from a Cessna Mustang to the M2. Cessna plans to make the delivery of Woods’ M2 shortly after it earns FAA certification later this year. Woods recently visited Cessna’s Independence, Kansas, manufacturing plant and got the A-lister’s tour, seeing the […]