Cessna Citation I
New life for an old model
By Mark Huber - February 1, 2010
This small-cabin (light) jet has lower per-mile direct operating costs than contemporary models such as the dassault falcon 10 and learjet 35A, and the acquisition cost is only 20 percent of what you’d pay for a similarly performing very light jet. Plus, you can tweak a citation i to the point where it even outperforms many new aircraft costing millions more. and properly maintained, it will fly virtually forever.
When it first hit the market in 1972, the 348-knot Cessna Citation 500 fanjet drew snickers. Cessna had spent $35 million, then half the worth of the company, developing a slow jet. It was a huge gamble and, to more than a few industry watchers, it looked like a foolish one. Airport wags laughed and called the airplane the “Slow-tation.”
Nobody’s laughing now. Despite having entered the field almost a decade after several competitors, Cessna has made a third of the roughly 16,000 business jets in service worldwide today. However, the company’s entry into the jet market didn’t come with that Citation 500; rather, it occurred in 1952 when the U.S. Air Force picked Cessna to build the T-37 primary jet trainer. The “Tweet,” as it was known, had many features you can still find on Citations–bulbous nose, straight wing and cruciform tail, to name a few.
Cessna pondered offering a civilian variant of the T-37 during the late 1950s. The Model 407 would carry a pilot and three passengers at up to 460 miles per hour at 46,000 feet. It didn’t make it past the mockup stage, but the idea of a passenger jet was never far from the minds of Cessna executives. In the 1960s, they surmised that a middle market existed between 500-mile-per-hour and 250-mile-per-hour turbojets. They guessed right.
In 1968, Cessna announced the 400-mile-per-hour Fanjet 500 (later rebranded as the Citation). The aircraft featured simple systems and docile handling geared to single-pilot operation. Cessna built about 690 Citation 500s, Citation Is and I/SPs between 1971 and 1985 and 439 of those remain on the FAA registry. The manufacturer made major improvements over the years, including the addition of thrust reversers, higher gross weights, lengthened wingspans and more powerful Pratt & Whitney Canada engines. Cessna delivered the first Citation 501/I/SP, certified for single-pilot operations, in 1977.
With the improvements announced in 1976, the company changed the aircraft’s name to Citation I. Maximum altitude increased to 41,000 feet and the 38-inch wing extension, combined with thrust reversers, allowed the airplane to land on much shorter runways. Your average 3,500-foot strip is no problem for this airplane, which can also land on turf.
Today you can find used Citation Is for as little as $400,000. Aircraft in this price range are generally early 500 models and have a service ceiling of 35,000 feet. You can buy a 1980 model in good condition for less than $700,000 (see chart above). That’s less than the price of a new single-engine piston airplane such as a Hawker Beechcraft Bonanza.
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