Textron announced last Wednesday that its newest business jet, the Cessna Citation Longitude, is nearing the completion of its flight test program. The company expects to obtain certification from the FAA before the end of the first quarter this year. Once the aircraft receives its certification, the company will be able to start customer deliveries of the new super-midsize jet.
The airplane is being built at Textron Aviation’s in Wichita, Kansas. The Longitude model follows on the success of the Cessna Citation Latitude, which accounted for 54 of the 180 business jets the company delivered in 2017. The Longitude was originally concieved as a $25.9 million, 12-passenger aircraft in 2012. The design was based around a pair of Safran engines that would delivered a 4,000-nautical-mile range at Mach 0.82. However, Cessna decided to change the design to better suit the super-midsize market. The revamped Longitude uses Honeywell HTF 7000-series engines with a 3,500 nautical mile range, and a lower $23.9 million price tag.
This larger airplane uses the same cabin cross section as the Latitude at six feet tall and more than six feet wide, the narrowest in its class. The cabin length comes in at 25 feet, and is available in a variety of seating configurations from the standard 8, to as many as 12 passengers. The standard configuration includes a double club-four arrangement of eight single executive seats, plus a side-facing single kibitzer in the front of the aircraft that’s suitable for a flight attendant. It’s also equipped with a full forward galley, aft vacuum flush lavatory, and a 112-cubic-foot baggage compartment accessible in flight.
Cessna has also announced that it’s looking at developing an even larger model than the Longitude. The Citation Hemisphere is a planned 4,500-nautical-mile, $35 million aircraft that will be aimed at the low end of the large cabin market. Safran has now resolved the technical issues that it had with the Silvercrest engine, so it is now looking like that will be the powerplant that the Hemisphere will be based around.
