Cessna

In a move that has sent shockwaves through the industry, Textron has parted ways with the highly respected chairman and CEO of its subsidiary Cessna Aircraft, Jack Pelton. The news was announced on Cessna’s Twitter feed and in a Textron news release on Monday afternoon. Pelton had earlier in the day sent a farewell internal […]

The lingering recession continues to make life difficult for airplane manufacturers, and Wichita giant Cessna Aircraft is no exception. Revenue at Cessna rose about 26 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, but low production and delivery levels contributed to an operating loss for the quarter of $38 million. On […]

Cessna has joined with King Schools and Redbird Flight Simulations to develop a new pilot training program that couples guided video instruction and demonstrations with hands-on simulator work. Designed to give students a new way of practicing flight maneuvers, the program, called Guided Independent Flight Training (GIFT), kicks off in May and is exclusive to […]

(March 2010) — The girlfriend of a student pilot, eager to see how his flying skills were coming along — he had recently soloed — arranged to accompany him and his instructor on a flight. They took off in a 172 on a beautiful June evening. She was sitting behind her boyfriend, who was in […]

Cessna has a mockup of its upgraded Corvalis TTx on display at the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida, this week. Equipped with Garmin‘s new G2000 avionics suite, the Corvalis TTx, which will be available for delivery in 2012, has received a full interior and exterior face lift. (Click here for a recent article […]

The CJ1+ program has “run its course,” said Robert Stangarone, vice president of communications at Cessna Aircraft Company. Having delivered three airplanes of this model in 2010 and with only two scheduled deliveries for this year, the company cites decreased customer demand as the reason for closing down its CJ1+ production line. First introduced in […]

(February 2011) — It has been seldom in the history of aviation that a single technology has revolutionized the way we fly by addressing multiple problems facing the industry and solving them all. The most important such event was the widescale adoption of the turbine engine in the 1940s. Turbines, as you know, remedied (and […]

(February 2011) — The call I was looking for came through in mid-May, offering me a gig as a stage manager at a big summer stock theater in Dayton, Ohio. This would get me out of the summer heat in Miami and would be a step up from the theater at which I was working. […]

Flying high, flying far in a luxury piston single.

(January 2010) — We were settled in at 24,000 feet, cruising along at around 225 knots true, burning 24 gallons of 100LL every hour while watching the nautical miles slip behind us. We’d taken off from Orlando Executive (ORL) in a Cessna Corvalis and were an hour into our flight, cruising at an altitude that […]