Cessna Citation Mustang jet deliveries steadily fall

When Textron Aviation Cessna unveiled its newest and smallest Citation business jet, the Mustang, at the 2002 National Business Aviation Association Convention in Orlando, Fla., the airplane was a hit.

On the opening day of the show, a long line of customers was at its booth at the Orange County Convention Center to put a deposit on the five-passenger, single-pilot jet that at the time was priced at $2.3 million. It took 170 orders that first day.

Since the peak year of 2009, when 125 Mustangs were delivered, annual deliveries of the jet have steadily declined, according to data from the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

In the past couple of years, deliveries of the entry-level jet have slipped to single digits, starting in 2014 when Textron Aviation delivered eight Mustangs compared with 20 the year before. In 2015 it again delivered eight Mustangs.

And in the first quarter of 2016 – the most recent information available – Textron Aviation has delivered one Mustang.

Business aviation industry analysts said single-digit deliveries by any airplane manufacturer likely wouldn’t be sustained for long.

“As a manufacturer, it’s not always the best financial decision to keep a onesie, twosie program,” said Brian Foley, an independent business aviation analyst.

A Textron Aviation spokeswoman said in e-mails to The Eagle that company would “not comment on speculation and rumors” about the future of the Mustang’s production but said the airplane “has enjoyed tremendous success.”

“We have a passionate customer base for that product and continue to produce the Mustang to meet current market demand,” Textron Aviation spokeswoman Rosa Lee Argotsinger said in the e-mail.

But she said the company is also careful to monitor and quickly adjust to customer demand.

“Customer needs do evolve and our strategy of investment ensures our ability to remain nimble in the market,” Argotsinger said in the e-mail.

According to the GAMA data, Textron Aviation has delivered 463 Mustangs since the jet received Federal Aviation Administration type certification in 2005.

“Normally a manufacturer wants to move a couple of hundred (of a clean-sheet design airplane) so that’s a relatively successful program in my mind,” Foley said of the Mustang deliveries.

“They’ve definitely paid back their investment there,” added Rolland Vincent, an industry forecaster and managing director of JetNet iQ.

Vincent said the Mustang came along at a time when there was a “whole hype around VLJs (very light jets)” and predictions that the new category of small, affordable jets would “darken the skies” between the creation of so-called air taxi services and throngs of turboprop and piston-engine aircraft owners moving up to the new, more affordable category of business jets.

But he and Foley said the 2008 financial crisis and the tightening of the credit markets that followed hurt demand for small jets, and demand for them never fully recovered.

“The credit crunch really affected that market,” Vincent said. “There’s been a vacuum since then.”

Vincent added that JetNet iQ’s 10-year business jet forecast does “not have the Mustang. We don’t anticipate this aircraft is going to continue to be produced.”

What’s more, Vincent and Foley think Textron Aviation’s 2013 introduction of the Citation M2 – whose differences with the Mustang include a private lavatory and improved performance – has stripped away most of the demand for its older and smaller sibling. Both jets are manufactured at the company’s plant in Independence, 113 miles southeast of Wichita.

“It’s clear that the market prefers the M2,” said Foley, referring to the airplane’s 4 to 1 deliveries against the Mustang in the first quarter of 2016.

Since 2013, when Textron Aviation began M2 deliveries, it has delivered 103 M2s compared with 37 Mustangs.

“They’ve now moved upmarket,” Vincent said of the M2. “The M2 is an upmarket investment” along with deliveries of the midsize Citation Latitude beginning last year and the super midsize Citation Longitude, deliveries of which are expected to begin in 2017.

“The leadership team, I think, has very appropriately decided to move upmarket,” Vincent said. “They’re playing up in the market where I personally think they should have been playing for a long time.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Cessna Citation Mustang jet deliveries steadily fall."