It was one year ago, at the NBAA Convention in Orlando, that Cessna took the wraps off its concept for a large-cabin long-range business jet (code-named LCC) and began a “what do you think of this?” process that continues at this year’s convention, after appearances by the mockup at EBACE in Geneva and the Paris Air Show earlier this year. The Wichita OEM has not made up its mind about launching such a project and “continues to perform exploratory design work with the goal of announcing in the first quarter of 2008 a decision on whether to proceed.” The full-scale mockup is on display here in Atlanta at Cessna’s booth (No. 8550).
“We’re working hard to get to closure on a business case for the large-cabin concept,” said Cessna chairman, president and CEO Jack Pelton here yesterday. With a backlog of $11 billion, Cessna knows a thing or two about business cases. “We sold 525 business jets this year through the end of August, compared with 496 in all of last year. We delivered 306 jets in 2006, we expect to deliver 380 by the end of this year and we’ll deliver 470 in 2008, all of them sold out already,” noted Pelton. “The challenge,” he said, “is to do all this in a manner that shareholders expect.” A three-year agreement with the machinists signed earlier this month paves the way for the smooth fulfillment of this massive order backlog.
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