Cessna drops out of large-cabin jet market

[flyingcheesehead]

The Columbus program is no longer "suspended" I guess:

Cessna Citation Columbus Program Killed

Cessna's suspended Citation Columbus program has been cancelled due to current market conditions, according to an 8K filing from parent company Textron. And Pratt & Whitney Canada has confirmed it has halted work on the PW810C engine designed to power the Columbus.

 

[wsuffa]

Hello Life. Goodbye, Columbus.

 

[Dave Krall CFII]

Almost $2 billion in incentives and orders and they still can't get a badly needed new bizjet off the ground. What's the world coming to? What aircraft can fill the niche? It's bad out there.

 

[Everskyward]

Almost $2 billion in incentives and orders and they still can't get a badly needed new bizjet off the ground. What's the world coming to? What aircraft can fill the niche? It's bad out there.

There are other aircraft which fill this niche, they just aren't made by Cessna. Cessna wanted to go out and compete in the large bizjet category which might not be such a good idea any more. They seem to dominate the light jet and midsize categories and in this time of the new frugality it's probably not a bad idea to stay with that plan.

 

[wabower]

This simply means they know they can't fund the program as previously planned, since part of the cap-X was to come from operations (sales). Their backlog is depleted,Textron's other divisions are hurting, so even if they wanted to continue the project they can no longer borrow on favorable terms.

So they take the write-off now, clean up the books and wait for a more propitious time to reintroduce the concept, but with all the work accomplished so far in hand for next time.

 

[David Moeslein]

Ask NetJets about this one! Just by chance the new airplane was named "Columbus"?