ATLANTA – The unprecedented strength of the business aircraft market is helping Cessna Aircraft Co. attract record orders, the general aviation aircraft manufacturer’s Chairman, President and CEO Jack J. Pelton announced yesterday at the 2007 National Business Aviation Association Meeting and Convention.
“Last year, we delivered 307 business jets,” Pelton said. “This year, we expect to deliver 380. Next year, we plan to deliver 470.”
As of Aug. 31, he said, the company had a record backlog of more than $11 billion in orders for about 2,700 units, half of them business jets. Orders booked this year through Aug. 31 include a record 525 business jets, up from 496 in all of 2006.
Last year, Cessna delivered 1,239 aircraft, including 307 Citation business jets, and posted revenue of about $4.2 billion and a backlog of about $8.5 billion.
“This extraordinary rate of growth is being driven by strong economies and corporate profits and a rapidly-emerging global marketplace,” Pelton said, predicting that about half the company’s sales this year will come from abroad.
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Cessna, a subsidiary of Providence-based Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT), currently produces eight models of business jets, including the world’s fastest civil jet, the Citation X, which has a top speed of Mach 0.92, a range of more than 3,000 nautical miles and a price tag of more than $20 million; six models of single-engine piston aircraft; and three versions of its Caravan single-engine turboprop.
The new Mustang – a four-passenger aircraft that is the smallest member of the Cessna business jet fleet, and the first “very light” aircraft (less than 10,000 pounds) to win Federal Aviation Administration certification – has accounted for 350 of the 525 business jet orders the company received in the first eight months of the year. It sells for about $2.6 million. Cessna said it expects to be producing 150 Mustangs per year by 2009.
“Clearly, our strategy of having the broadest, most comprehensive product line in the industry is serving us well,” Pelton said.
Several orders have been announced at the NBAA convention, which runs through tomorrow at Fulton County Airport and the Georgia World Center. They include an order from San Carlos, Calif.-based XOJET for 30 Citation Xs, valued at more than $600 million; another from India for four Citations: two CJ2+ and one XLS for authorized Cessna agent Taneja Aerospace and Aviation Ltd. (TAAL), plus one XLS+ for TAAL parent Indian Seamless Metal Tubes Ltd.; and an order from ITOCHU Corp. subsidiary Japan Aerospace Corp. for three CJ2+, one CJ4, one Encore+, one XLS+, three Caravans and three SkyHawks.
“As evidenced with this order from Japan, we continue to enjoy truly exciting growth throughout the entire Asian market,” said Todd Duhnke, the aircraft maker’s director of international sales, who noted that Citations are “the most widely used business jets in Japan.”
Cessna’s full range of business jets – including a Citation X with winglets and several single-engine piston and turboprop aircraft – can be seen at the company’s Fulton County Airport exhibit. Full-size mockups of the XLS+ and CJ4 business jets now in development, plus a proposed Large Cabin Concept that would be Cessna’s biggest business jet, are on view at the company’s display (exhibit 8550) at the Georgia World Center.
Since its founding in 1927, the Wichita, Kan.-based Cessna Aircraft Co. has delivered more than 190,000 airplanes to nearly every country in the world. Additional information about Cessna is available at www.cessna.com; information about parent company Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) and its other business units is available at www.textron.com.
