Textron’s Cessna Citation family
The Citation is a family of business jets by Cessna that started in 1972 with the entry into service of the first model and more than 35 million flight hours logged since. In the fifty years following the 1969 first flight, more than 7,500 Citations have been delivered, forming the largest business jet fleet in the world. Cessna Aircraft Co. started building business jets in the mid-1950s and its first bizjet offering was the Fanjet 500, which later became the Citation, named after a thoroughbred racehorse. It was announced in 1968 and achieved FAA certification in 1971. The airplane became an instant success and Cessna delivered 52 Citation 500s in 1972. Following a long list of successful Citation models, Cessna’s Citation X design team won the Robert J. Collier Trophy in 1996 for developing the first business jet to achieve a cruise speed of Mach 0.92.
Until 1989, all Citations were certified to be flown by two pilots. However, that year, Cessna announced the CitationJet later ‘CJ’ for short to provide options for owners who wanted to fly solo. It developed into a series of CJs under the same single-pilot type certificate, the coveted 525 type. Today, Textron Aviation’s 525-series models in production include the M2 Gen2, CJ3+ and CJ4 Gen2, a derivative of the CJ1. The initial type-rating training takes about 16 days of ground and flight sessions. While no new type rating is required to swap from one to another, pilots need to go through approximately five days of differences training when moving between models.
The line started with the small Citation I prototype flying on 15 September 1969 and produced until 1985, developed into the 1978-2006 Citation II / Bravo, the 1989-2011 Citation V/Ultra / Encore and the CitationJet since 1993. The stand-up Citation III/ VI/VII was delivered from 1983 to 2000; its fuselage was reused in the Citation X/X+ delivered from 1996 to 2018, the Sovereign from 2004 to 2021 and the Excel since 1998. The Mustang was a Very Light Jet (VLJ) delivered from 2006 to 2017 while the flat floor fuselage Latitude has been delivered since 2015 and the larger Longitude from 2019. Textron Aviation aircraft are engineered to be flexible and accommodating to meet a number of mission specific challenges.
The previous methods of private aviation are evolving and one of the names at the forefront of this technological shift is Textron Aviation. The distinguished aircraft manufacturer has unveiled its next-generation Cessna Citation M2 Gen2 and Cessna Citation XLS Gen2 business jets which is set to elevate private aviation. Orders for the Citation M2 Gen2 and Citation XLS Gen2 are now open. Deliveries of the Citation M2 Gen2 are expected to commence by the end of the first quarter of 2022, while the Citation XLS Gen2 will arrive in the second quarter of 2022.