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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Do you know
what is the third biggest airplane manufacturer in the world? It is still in
debat between Bombardier, which I am writing about in this article, or Brazil’s
Embraer, which I will write about it in the next article. But whatever the real
answer is, they both are amazing companies, which is the reason why I am going
to make a review about them.
Well, to
begin with, Bombardier is a Canada based company. Its name when established was
Bombardier Inc. Now Bombardier Inc. is the mother company of Bombardier
Aerospace. With the headquarter is in Quebec, Canada, Bombardier employed more
than 35,000 persons total.
At first,
Bombardier Inc, bought Canadair in 1986 to make the nearly-bankrupt company
into a profitable one. Then an Ireland based aircraft manufacturer, Short
Brothers was acquired, also a near bankrupt company as well. Following Short
Brothers are the already-bankrupt Learjet business aircraft division of
Wichita, Kansas in 1990, plus a money-burner Boeing division company, de
Havilland Aircraft of Canada in 1992, based in Toronto, Canada.
Now the
aerospace division is responsible for more than half of the mother company’s
main revenue. The most popular aircraft of this company is the CRJ series,
which includes CRJ700, CRJ900, and CRJ1000. The other most popular series are
Dash 8 Series 400, and CRJ100, CRj200, and CRJ440.
To make an
improvement for their assembly plant, Bombardier plans to build two factory, in
Kansas City, Missouri, and Mirabel, Quebec, Canada, to increase the usage of
the CSeries, which are the most sold airplane in Bombardier.
To compete
face-to-face with Boeing’s most popular 737 Series next generation, Bombardier
makes the CSeries which offers 110 seats and 130 seats. With a claim of 20%
more fuel efficient, that makes the CSeries 8% more fuel efficient compared
with Boeing 737 Max.
Lufthansa
has already pre-order 60 CSeries aircrafts, with an option of additional 30
more. In 2011, NetJets has also placed an order of 50 plus additional options
up to 70 CSeries aircrafts, worth $2.8 to $6.7 billion. For customers who needs
any financial plan, Bombardier and China’s ICBC work together to supply the
financing for up to $8 billion.
The biggest
deal in the aircraft history was made in November 2012, between Bombardier and
Swiss’ VistaJet. VistaJet wants to buy 56 Bombardier Global jets worth to $3.1
billion, with an option for Bombardier to sell another 86 Global jets, which
makes the total transaction of $7.3 billion.
But in July
2014, as the president Guy Hachey retired, Bombardier divided the company into
three division, commercial aircraft, business aircraft, and aerospace and
aerostructure manufacture. This led to a more than 1,800 employees were fired.
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The
Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation is United States’ most advanced private jet
and business jet manufacturer. Its parent company is General Dynamics. At
first, in 1950’s late, Gulfstream Aerospace was named The Grumman Aircraft
Engineering Co. who produced and developed military aircrafts. Later it made
the first business jet called Grumman Gulfstream I (GI). With a maximum speed
of 350 mph, and can accommodate up to 12 passengers, the GI was a big success
for the Grumman Aircraft.
Then fueled
with the success of GI, they moved forward to Grumman Gulfstream II (GII). This
also began the separation of the military aircraft manufacture and civil
aircraft manufacture in 1966. The civilian aircraft production then was moved to
Savannah, Georgia, where there are many skilled labors and more room for any
expansion of the factory.
The Grumman
Aircraft Engineering then joined with the American Aviation Corp. a light
aircraft manufacturer in 1972. But in 1978, Grumman sold the Savannah based
factory to the American Jet Industries, headed by Allen Paulson. He renamed the
company to Gulfstream American, and accelerated the production of GulfstreamIII, more speed and more flight range compared to G II. The G III was first
sold in 1980, and became the first business jet to fly over the both poles. The
G III marked the first big success of the Gulfstream series in the marketplace.
Fast
forward to 2000s. The General Dynamics, saw the big opportunities in
Gulfstream, bought this company. General Dynamics then built the support
facility in Savannah facility. Also in 2001, to improve the maintenance and
repair of the Gulfstream series, it bought four US maintenance facilities, in
Minneapolis, Dallas, Las Vegas, and West Palm Beach.
After using
Romanian number for its product, Gulfstream started to use Arabic numerals in
2002. The production were included the high speed Gulfstream G100, mid range
Gulfstream G200 and G300, long range Gulfstream G400, and the ultra long range
Gulfstream G500 and G550.
2003 marked
its expansion outside of the US by acquired the London based service center. The
Gulfstream G450 was also first introduced to the market.
The
legendary Gulfstream G650’s first showdown was in 2009, when it walked out of
the Savannah manufacturing factory, and had its first flight in November 25
that year.
An
unpleasant news was heard in 2011, one of the Gulfstream G650 was in an
accident when it failed to fly, crashing to the runway of Roswell, and directly
killing its four crews, two test pilots and two flight test engineers. By the
investigation of the National Transportation Safety Board, they found the cause
of the accident. Using the data, Gulfstream made the version 2 of the G650.
They raised the speed of the V2.
Their next
innovation was in 2012, when the news of their newest business jet was heard, a
quiet supersonic business jet, which its first drawing was shown in December
2012.
Nowadays
more than 40 countries have and operate any Gulfstream business jets. The
aircraft is not only for doing fast travel, but also modified to medical
evacuations, pilot and astronaut trainings, cargo and personnel transportation,
and maritime and aerial reconnaissance.
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