GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC
Achievement comes up to six months later than originally planned, but business jet's performance is better than expected
Cessna has received provisional US certification for the Citation Sovereign, with full type certification of the mid-size business jet expected in the first quarter. This represents a delay of up to six months from the schedule established when the Sovereign was given the go-ahead in January 2000, but performance is better than projected.
When the Sovereign was launched in October 1998, certification had been set for the second quarter of 2002, but the programme was put on hold to free engineering resources for development of the Citation CJ1, CJ2 and Encore - all launched at the same time. Cessna says the Sovereign is its biggest all-new design effort since the Citation X.
Flight testing has resulted in increases in performance, Cessna says, including a Mach 0.02 increase in maximum speed, to M0.8; an 8% increase in maximum range, to 5,620km (3,040nm); and a similar reduction in take-off distance, to 1,130m (3,690ft). The Sovereign is powered by 5,690lb-thrust (25kN) Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306Cs and equipped with Honeywell Primus Epic avionics.
Cessna, meanwhile, says it remains on track to deliver 165-170 Citations this year, despite confirming that fractional ownership firm NetJets has abandoned firm orders for 50 Citation CJ3s. The orders were cancelled in March last year, but Cessna only publicly confirmed the cancellation last month, after NetJets ordered 50 Raytheon Hawker 400XPs to replace the CJ3s as its entry-level offering (Flight International, 23 December 2003-5 January). The $360 million deal also includes eight Hawker 800XP mid-size business jets.
The cancelled CJ3 order was for deliveries between late 2005 and 2008, and Cessna says the current CJ3 backlog will fill out the planned production schedule "well into 2007".
Deliveries of the CJ3 light jet are expected to begin the fourth quarter, a slight slip over the previously published schedule calling for deliveries to begin in the third quarter.
"We are obviously disappointed in this [NetJets] decision," says Jack Pelton, Cessna president and chief executive, adding that Cessna still has the "largest population of aircraft in the NetJets fleet".
Source: Flight International
