Textron’s chief executive has made clear that supply chain troubles continue weighing on the company’s aviation division, with parts shortages still disrupting production and holding up deliveries.
“It’s still problematic,” Textron CEO Scott Donnelly said on 18 July when asked about the health of Textron Aviation’s supply chain. “There are still parts that are from suppliers that continue to give us some heartache, with late deliveries.”
The comments came the day Textron reported that healthy demand for business jets and general aviation aircraft pushed Textron Aviation to a $195 million second-quarter profit, up 14% year on year.
Textron Aviation, which manufactures Cessna and Beechcraft aircraft, generated $1.5 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 8% year on year.
“We’re seeing strong demand in jets, turboprops. It’s pretty much across all models and across the whole family of products,” says Donnelly.
Demand may be strong. But four years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, supply chain headaches remain a significant factor restraining Textron Aviation’s ability to produce aircraft, forcing slower output.
Parts shortages continue creating “factory inefficiencies”, requiring, for instance, that the company complete some production work outside typical sequences, Donnelly says. “We’ve been managing through that, unfortunately, now for a number of years. It does continue to… drag on our performance in the aviation business.”
The manufacturer delivered 42 jets in the second quarter, two fewer than in the same quarter of 2023.
“We are a bit behind where we would like to be on a couple of these models,” says Donnelly.
Notably, the second-quarter deliveries included just eight midsize Latitude business jets, down from 13 delivered in the prior quarter and 11 in the second quarter of last year.
“Latitude, specifically, had one item that we had to… manage our way through”, Donnelly says, without adding detail. “We had a few [Latitude] deliveries towards the end of the quarter that we didn’t get out. They’ve now gone.”
During the second quarter, Textron Aviation acquired Munich-based Amazilia Aerospace, a developer of digital flight-control, flight-guidance and vehicle-management systems.
Textron intends to install some of those systems on aircraft produced by its Pipistrel division, including the special-mission single-prop Surveyor and the Nuuva line of hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, Donnelly says.
Also during the second quarter, Textron Aviation completed first flight of its Citation Ascend, the company’s latest update of its venerable Citation Excel business jet. Textron Aviation has logged more than 400h of Ascend flight tests, says Donnelly. The company has targeted a 2025 service entry for the type.
Last quarter, the Federal Aviation Administration also certificated the passenger-cargo combi variant of Cessna’s SkyCourier.
