Citation Longitude To Be Built Alongside King Airs

Textron Aviation’s new Cessna Citation Longitude will be built at the former Beechcraft campus—Wichita Beech Field—in the same plant that produces King Airs, Barons and Bonanzas, company executives told AIN. The move to build the first Citation on what is now referred to as “East Campus” in Wichita comes as Textron Aviation further integrates Cessna Aircraft with the Beech assets acquired in March 2014.

“With the acquisition of Beechcraft, we got some really good facilities,” said Dave Rosenberg, v-p of integration and strategy for Textron Aviation. “It’s a case of trying to maximize the company’s footprint. As we look at our capacity at our East and West Campuses…we try to do all this new product development using current facilities and not have to spend additional capital on buildings.”

Longitude final assembly “fits in very nicely on the East Campus, and so that is the path we chose to pursue,” Rosenberg added. The company has been making the minor renovations required for the line and is in the process of adding the appropriate tooling for Longitude final assembly at Plant IV.

The moves are part of a number of changes that have been ongoing at the East Campus as part of the integration, including moving Longitude engineering into Plant III. Part of Plant III was modified to support both the engineering and development of the first Longitude “test assets” for the flight-test program “We invested quite a bit getting that experimental flight capability up and running,” he said.