Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief at AIN Media Group, has been flying since 1975 and writing about aviation since 1978 and now has the best job in the world, running editorial operations for Aviation International News, Business Jet Traveler, and FutureFlight.aero. In addition to working as an A&amp;P mechanic on everything from Piper Cubs to turboprops, Matt taught flying at his father’s flight school in Plymouth, Mass., in the early 1980s, flew for an aircraft owner/pilot, and for two summer seasons hunted swordfish near the George’s Banks off the East Coast from a Piper Super Cub. An ATP certificated fixed-wing pilot and CFII and commercial helicopter pilot, Matt is type-rated in the Citation 500 and Gulfstream V/550. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Matt and his team cover the entire aviation scene including business aircraft, helicopters, avionics, safety, manufacturing, charter, fractionals, technology, air transport, advanced air mobility, defense, and other subjects of interest to AIN, BJT, and FutureFlight readers.

Editor-in-Chief

Matt Thurber

The combination of two 80-year-old Wichita aircraft manufacturers–Cessna and Beechcraft–under the new Textron Aviation umbrella marks its debut at NBAA 2014 in Orlando, Florida. With 21 airplane models&nbsp;in production between the two factories, which are about 10 miles apart in Wichita, and a full-service network that is rapidly becoming capable of handling all of the Beechcraft and Cessna turbine models, Textron Aviation and its president and CEO, Scott Ernest, continue to invest in new products as the integration of the two companies solidifies.

 


At the static display, Textron Aviation brought 12 aircraft. The new Citation Latitude equipped with the first production interior is part of the display and well worth a visit to experience the larger flat-floor cabin and the spacious new flight deck. Other Cessnas include the Citation X+, Sovereign+, XLS+, CJ4, CJ3+, M2, Mustang and Caravan EX. The Beechcraft family is represented by a King Air 350i in Wheels Up livery, a 250 and a C90GTx with a new performance improvement package.

 


“We’ve been extremely engaged in the whole integration activity,” said Ernest, who commented that the effort to merge Beechcraft and Cessna under Textron Aviation involved two different cultures that weren’t that far apart. There are many cases of family members working at both companies and everyone understands that “we have a culture built around taking care of customers,” he said. “It’s coming together really well.”

 


Ernest doesn’t see any overlap in the Beechcraft and Cessna lineup, and he reports that Textron is strongly supportive of its newest division (Textron Aviation) and that, especially for the Beechcraft side, which went through a painful bankruptcy, the company has the financial means to invest in new products. “We’ve had nothing but fantastic support from Textron,” Ernest said. “When I go there with new product ideas and investment opportunities, the support has been phenomenal. When we look at the aviation environment and what we’ve been through in the last few years, we could easily say, don’t invest, wait and see. But we’ve seen nothing but positive support from Textron, [which says] let’s keep investing. This is the right way to move through this.”

 

 

 


It’s About Branding

 


While there was plenty of discussion during Textron’s acquisition of Beechcraft about branding, “When we put this together, brands were the most important thing we felt we had to protect,” he said. “It’s worked out well. There are individuals who just bleed Beech King Air, so you don’t want to call it a Textron Aviation King Air. Brands mean a lot. There is a lot of history [with Cessna and Beechcraft]. Clyde Cessna and Walter Beech worked together 80 years ago and started a company together.”

 


Ernest is especially proud of the Cessna team that designed and built the Scorpion military jet prototype for Textron AirLand and is hopeful of seeing orders for that. The prototype has flown more than 200 hours. “I feel we’re in a pretty good position to get something done this year. We’ve got interested parties outside the U.S.,” he said. “I give our team a lot of credit. They took it from paper to in the air within a two-year time period. That’s the beauty of what we can do here.”

 


The addition of Beechcraft not only brought new products to the combined companies but also another 500 engineers added to the 1,000 at Cessna. “They like designing stuff, and we’ve got to keep them busy,” he said. The engineering teams have already been collocated.

 


The plan to cross-train employees at the Textron Aviation service center network, which combines the Cessna facilities with the former Hawker Beechcraft Services bases, is beneficial not only for aircraft owners and operators but also from a sales standpoint. The owners of the 3,000 Hawker jets in the field are happy to have a factory-owned place to bring their aircraft for service, Ernest explained, but this also represents new sales opportunities. “I talked to guy with a Hawker 900–he loves it–about the service network and cross-training. The next thing you know we’re talking about the Sovereign or X, and we wouldn’t have had that opportunity to meet, without this acquisition.”

 


Product Investment

 


Now Ernest feels that much of the integration is done. “We’re evolving to the next step, which is product investment. We’ve got business leaders for each one of those families [jets, turboprops, pistons] and we’re actively putting together business plans. We finished the Citation X+, the Sovereign+ and the CJ3+, all [of] what we had in the pipeline. The Latitude is on track and we’ve got four flying.

 


“The challenge we had with the Citation X+ was that we stretched it 15 inches. Realistically we rebuilt the whole plane. We had to do all the icing tests on the wings. It’s a very unique plane, when you’re flying at [Mach] 0.935, you have a lot of different items you have to deal with from a certification standpoint, so we had to redo the entire certification of the X. The Sovereign+, Scorpion, M2, Latitude, all are two- to three-year timeframes. Look at the competition; no one does it in that timeframe.”

 


In the second quarter, Cessna shipped 18 airplanes that wouldn’t have sold “if we weren’t developing new products,” Ernest said. “This business is all about if you stop investing, you end up like what happened to Beechcraft. You’ve got to listen to customers and respond accordingly, in a timeframe that’s not 10 years.”

 


The future of business aviation looks even better given recent developments in the used aircraft market. “Used aircraft for sale are trending down,” Ernest confirmed. “Two years ago we had close to $350 million in used inventory [in the Citation and King Air markets]. That number has been cut in half in the last two years. Pricing is finally firmed up on the used side. If you have a good plane I can’t hold onto it. Manufacturers backed off on what they’ve been producing. There was a huge glut of product.”

 


In the Citation market, the number of used jets for sale that are younger than 10 years is down to about 2 percent, while the King Air number is below one percent. The drop for older airplanes has been significant since it peaked in 2009/2010, with the Citation number now down to about 7 percent and the King Air number at just over 5 percent.

 


“[The improvement] probably started about the fourth quarter of last year,” said Ernest. “More people have stepped into the market. I’m not saying it’s all done and we’re on the road [to a rapidly growing market], but it’s just better. Discussions with customers are on the increase, sales guys see much more activity with respect to the products and their ability to sell. We’re going to get to the point where it’s going to feel better for everybody.”

 


Better times for Textron Aviation means more new products. “It’s supply and demand,” Ernest said. “Look at any market, with respect to what’s available on the market that you can buy.” When automobile manufacturers cut production during the recession, used car prices eventually climbed. “You’ll see the same thing in aviation, a good used plane commands top dollar right now,” he said, “and that moves pricing up.”

 


Even though the inventory of good used airplanes is shrinking, manufacturers still have to make new products attractive. “You have to give people a reason to buy new,” he said. “If you just do a small tweak they’ll keep their own product. The Latitude is good example with respect to new avionics, a new cabin diameter and new suite of comfort-level [features], which will make it a very productive machine.”

 


While he didn’t provide specifics about possible niches that could be filled in the Beechcraft and Cessna product lines, Ernest signaled that there are plans to develop new airplanes. “I love producing new products,” he said, “it gets me excited every day. We’ll continue to use all these resources and investing in the future and making sure Kriya [Shortt, senior v-p of sales and marketing] has got plenty to sell. I feel very good about where we’re at and the positive direction of the team.”

 


Product Update

 


Textron Aviation’s jets have seen four certifications achieved since December 2013, including the X+, the Sovereign+, the M2 and CJ3+. A number of international approvals are under way, reflecting growing interest worldwide. “We are global,” said Chris Hearne, vice president of jets, “and we need to be in other countries.”

 


The newest jet in the Cessna line is the $16.2 million Latitude, which features a larger six-foot stand-up cabin (77-inch width) with a flat floor. The production interior on Latitude P2, which is at the NBAA static display, shows off what Cessna designers, led by Cynthia Halsey, have been able to do with all that space.

 


The layout has a two-seat divan opposite the cabin entry door and four seats in club configuration with two tables, then two forward-facing seats with slimline tables. There is one belted seat in the lav/closet for a total of nine passenger seats. Interestingly, the forward-facing main cabin seats were able to pass dynamic seat testing requirements without shoulder harnesses. The divan has a unique feature, embedded airbags in the divan and surrounding bulkhead, a more elegant way to meet side-facing seat dynamic testing requirements without using bulky airbag seat belts. There is also an airbag for the belted closet seat to protect legs during an accident.

 


The cabin windows are 30 percent larger than legacy Citations and are surrounded by two-inch wide opaque reveals. An optional feature is LED lights within the reveals, and the lights can be dimmed. Two-stage mechanical manual blinds are used; one stage cuts off light entirely, while the other uses an opaque blind to let some light through.

 


The Latitude is Cessna’s first jet with an electrically operated entry door. A clutch release mechanism allows the door to be operated manually in case of electrical or motor failure.

 


The cockpit is much roomier, thanks to the larger fuselage and the cleaner looking Garmin G5000 Intrinzic flight deck.

 


During flight testing Cessna has been able to extract more performance from the Latitude, and long-range cruise has climbed to 2,700 nm, up from 2,500 nm (four passengers, NBAA IFR range with 200-nm alternate). The sea level ISA takeoff distance over a 50-foot obstacle is now 3,668 feet, down from 4,030 feet. “The Latitude continues to outperform our expectations,” Hearne said.

 


On the turboprop side, Christi Tannahill, senior v-p, turboprop aircraft, announced updates to two popular models, the 250 and C90GTx, both of which received FAA certification in time for the NBAA show. The 250 will be available in an increased gross weight option, with mtow of 13,420 pounds, adding 920 pounds to mtow and 870 pounds to useful load.

 


This should appeal to buyers in countries where turboprop pilots require type ratings as the increased mtow moves the 250 IGW the into the commuter category and requires a type-rated pilot in the U.S. The improved payload boosts high-speed cruise range of the 250 to 1,412 nm, up from the baseline model’s 957 nm. The option will cost an additional $150,000 (base price is $6.1 million) and will include one type rating training event. It will also be available as a retrofit for existing 250 models for the same price.

 


A performance improvement package has added new features and capabilities to the King Air C90GTx. The most obvious is new 96-inch-diameter, swept-blade Hartzell propellers, which add significantly more thrust and improve the climb rate and reduce takeoff distance over a 50-foot obstacle to 1,984 feet from 2,575 feet. Another external change is dual aft-body strakes and the Pro Line 21 avionics are updated with new speed cues. The C90GTx with the improvements is at the Textron Aviation static display.

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