Development activities for Cessna's new Hemisphere large-cabin aircraft are well under way, with the customer advisory board that will help to shape the twinjet preparing to meet for the first time.
Textron Aviation
The clean-sheet business jet – which tops the Citation family – was launched last year and is scheduled to make its first flight in 2019.
“The board will meet in Wichita this month,” says Kriya Shortt, senior vice-president for sales and marketing at Cessna parent Textron Aviation. “It will consist of between 15 to 20 core members – including owners and operators of [other] large-cabin aircraft, as well as potential and current Citation owners – who will provide feedback and input on the Hemisphere programme.”
The aircraft is Cessna’s first foray into the large-cabin sector. It is positioned at the lower end of this segment where Shortt says “there has been no investment for 30 years”.
“We have spent a long time looking at what the market needs in this sector. With a clean-sheet aircraft we can start from scratch to produce our best-in-class product,” she says.
Preliminary specifications indicate a 2.59m (102in)-diameter fuselage cross-section, a range of up to 4,500nm (8,334km) and a price point of around $35 million. “It’s early days, but the feedback we get from the [customer advisory] board should help us to produce a highly desirable product,” says Shortt.
The Hemisphere sits at the top of Textron Aviation’s 18-strong family of piston and turbine-powered aircraft across the Beechcraft and Cessna brands. Next down the range is the in-development $24 million super-midsize Longitude, which is being readied for a first flight in the third quarter, says Shortt. Certification and service entry are on target for 2017, she adds.
The Longitude shares the same fuselage cross-section as the midsize Latitude which entered service in mid-2015. Cessna on 11 April started a European demonstration tour for the latter, equipped with its new standard interior, which has been revamped with wider seats. The first example was recently handed over to a US customer.
“Since entering service in the US [in August], the Latitude has proved very popular, with 16 aircraft delivered by the end of 2015,” says Shortt. “We expect this trend to continue throughout 2016 and beyond."
Kate Sarsfield/Flightglobal
Europe is Textron’s second largest market, with an inventory of around 500 Citation business jets, according to Flightglobal’s Fleets Analyzer database. The continent is also home to three Latitudes, Analyzer reveals. “We will tour the major European cities [with the revamped aircraft] before heading back to Wichita. We will return with the aircraft in May for the EBACE show [in Geneva, Switzerland],” says Shortt.
Source: Flight International
