Cessna

We cruised along under a high gray overcast at 13,500 feet, solitary in the sky over the winter patchwork Kansas countryside. On the gauges were figures that a pilot of any single-engine nonturbine airplane would be delighted to see: 210 knots true while burning 18 gph. This was the kind of true airspeed that 30 […]

Since 1997, Cessna has been telling pilots of most of its light twins not to fly in known icing — but not all, as a previous report in Flying‘s eNewsletter suggested. Cessna issued a Mandatory Service Bulletin back then (MEB97-4) requiring that those twins not approved for flight in known icing (FIKI) have placards installed […]

In clear, cool Kansas-winter skies, Cessna took its latest bizjet offering, the Citation Latitude, on its first flight yesterday morning. The two Pratt & Whitney PW306D turbofan engines that power the midsized business jet took it up to 28,000 feet and 200 knots, the upper speed limit for the flight. The Latitude has a ceiling […]

The immaculately restored 1959 Cessna L-19 Bird Dog/Dodge M37 truck combination that was donated to the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction, which took place last week in Scottsdale, Arizona, did quite well for its charity, to say the least. Cessna announced that the auction pieces were bought by a Cessna customer who wished to remain anonymous […]

Cessna 182Q owners who install a ballistic recovery system (BRS) in their airplanes will now get an added bonus — 160 pounds of extra gross weight. According to an announcement made by BRS Aerospace this week, that 160 pounds of gross weight will translate into a net increase of 65 to 75 pounds of useful […]

Cessna has extra reason to celebrate this holiday season after announcing the recent FAA certification of both the new Citation M2 and the Citation Sovereign+. The Cessna Citation M2 was first introduced in the fall of 2011 and intended as a step-up for Citation Mustang owners. Priced at $4.4 million, the M2 features Garmin G3000 […]

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 […]