The Cessna
Aircraft Company was built in 1927 by Clyde Cessna himself in Wichita, Kansas. First
it made only small pistoned aircraft, now Cessna also makes business jets. Now the
owner of Cessna is Textron Aviation.
Once a
farmer, Mr. Clyde Cessna first built and flew his own-made airplane in June
1911. In 1927, Clyde Cessna met Victor Roos, and they became partners to make
the Cessna-Roos Aircraft Company, but Victor Roos sold his interest in the
company back to Clyde Cessna. That day, Clyde Cessna owned 100% of his company.
His first produced aircraft, the Cessna DC-6, got the certification in the same
day of the stock market crash in 1929. And if it was not bad enough, due to the
Great Depression, Cessna closed its factory in 1932.
But its
Cessna CR-3 won the competition in 1933, The American Air Race in Chicago, and
also set the speed record. That achievement made his company to be known
worldwide. After that the duo Dwayne and Dwight Wallace took the helmet and
turn it into the legend of the aircraft world.
In 1940,
luck came to the company as the US Army ordered 33 special custom Cessna T-50s,
soon be followed by the Canadian Air Force to order 180 same airplanes. To this
date, those two orders was their biggest order has been received.
After the
World War 2, Cessna released the 120 and 140 models, introducing an all-metal
aircraft and production tools, not hand-made airplanes like they made it before
the World War 2. The 140 Model got the “Outstanding Plane of the Year 1948” by
the US Flight Instructor Association. Cessna also produced helicopters, started
from the Cessna CH-1 in 1955.
The legendary
Cessna Citation series started its tale in 1969 by the flight of Cessna
Citation I. in 1975, Cessna had built its 100,000 planes. In 1985, General
Dynamics bought Cessna and started the Cessna Caravan, then General Dynamics
sold Cessna to Textron Inc, in 1992. Textron become the owner of Cessna
Aircraft until now.
In 2007,
Cessna announced that it wanted to make the Cessna 162 in China, join venture
with the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, a Chinese Government company. But many
protested their intention, and Cessna had to make press conference just to
explain the business point of view, and they also made sure that the airplane’s
quality is the same as if the Cessna 162 was made in the USA. The number of
complaints was just increased, rather than decreased. But Cessna still made the
production in China.
Cessna
cannot escape the 2008 financial crisis, and had to cut thousands of workers
and closed the Oregon facility. With this incident, Textron also announced the
loss of US$ 8M, most of them was because of the loss of Cessna.
In 2011,
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) fined Cessna US$ 4M for not finding
the failure of following quality assurance requirement in production of 83
Cessna 400.
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