Cessna

Tom, I’ve got bad news for you,” Brian says when I answer the phone. The phone call isn’t a surprise. I’ve expected the call every time my airplane was in the hands of a mechanic during the last year or so, but it isn’t welcome. The Lycoming IO-360 in my 1976 Cardinal RG was overhauled […]

Engine swaps for turbine airplanes are, as Lane Wallace pointed out in her overview of the turbine re-engining marketplace, a popular way for airplane owners to get more value out of an existing airplane. For those owners who are looking to get more hauling power or improved performance without trading up, an engine swap is […]

Texas Turbine’s TPE331 conversion brings extra muscle to the Cessna Caravan and Grand Caravan.

The first happy customers will be receiving their Cessna Citation CJ4s later this year, following last week’s announcement that the FAA has granted type certification to the latest light jet from Cessna. The $9 million (2010 dollars) CJ4 shares a type rating (including single-pilot operation) with the rest of Cessna’s CJ series. With an NBAA […]

New wing and engine designs, plus advanced systems and avionics, make Cessna’s newest light jet its best ever.

The controls felt like a Citation CJ, but the numbers on the new Collins Pro Line 21 displays didn’t belong to any CJ I had ever flown. Level at 45,000 feet, the true airspeed was 425 knots. And it had taken only 23 minutes to reach that rarified altitude after a near-maximum weight takeoff. How […]

A Cessna 337 Skymaster, a centerline-thrust piston twin, crashed on the grounds of New Jersey’s Monmouth Executive Regional Airport (BLM) on Monday afternoon in good weather. All five on board were killed, including three adults, a teenager and a younger boy. The flight originated at the airport about seven minutes before the crash, and some […]

On March 4, 2008, a Citation 500 with five people aboard took off from Wiley Post Airport in Oklahoma City. Two minutes later, it lay a smoking wreckage in a wooded area four miles away. Many witnesses saw the crash. One reported hearing what “sounded like an engine compressor stall” — that is, a loud […]

Just before the new year, Cessna delivered the first Model 162 SkyCatcher to Rose Pelton, the wife of Cessna President and CEO Jack Pelton. Rose planned to use her new 162 to — what else? — learn to fly. The delivery took place across the field from Cessna at Yingling Aircraft, where the first SkyCatchers […]

Last week, Cessna has announced the resumption of production of its Sovereign twinjet. The company also announced it had hired back 60 workers, with 120 more to be reinstated in the coming weeks. Even with the announcement, Cessna now plans to build even fewer jets in 2010 than the 275 it delivered last year. That […]