One of the best-selling midsize Citation Excel continues to be available for purchase in factory-new form, having morphed from the unique 560XL in various iterations and now called the Ascend. But not surprisingly, a team of former Cessna Citation executives have taken on a small corner of the used marketplace for the Excel and created a refurbished version—the Citation Excel Eagle—filling a market area of interest for buyers who just like the airplane but don’t need to spend $17 million on the most recent version.
While the Excel Eagle is recent by way of avionics, interior, paint, and another features, it does start with a preowned airframe and the prevailing engines, however the mod package extends the lifetime of the Excel well into the approaching a long time. Business jets, in any case, fly little or no in corporate, non-fleet service. Even some high-time airframes that got here from fleet operators have logged relatively few hours compared with airplanes flown by airlines. In other words, there’s lots of life left in Excels of every type.
A notable difference between the Ascend and the remainder of the Excel fleet is that the brand new model has a flat floor, which actually lowers the cabin interior height. So a taller occupant might discover a refurbished Excel with its trenched floor more accommodating, further lending to the appeal of programs just like the CitationPartners Excel Eagle. There’s one other key difference between the Ascend and earlier models and that’s the Ascend’s autothrottle system. Presumably, Garmin could sooner or later certify autothrottles for G5000-upgraded Excels, but that hasn’t happened yet.
The Eagle program was launched by Russ Meyer, his son Russ Meyer III, Gary Hay, and Joe Hepburn. The senior Meyer was Cessna chairman for 32 years (now chairman emeritus) and is chairman of CitationPartners. Russ Meyer III, president of CitationPartners, managed the Citation CJ3 and Mustang programs. Hay’s roles at Cessna included worldwide marketing, sales, and customer support, and he succeeded Meyer as CEO in 2000. Hepburn also held a major role throughout the CJ3 program and led product support and the piston business unit.
“We were all involved within the Excel development,” Hay said, explaining that the founding team’s experience and the suppliers they organized for the project led to the name CitationPartners.
Textron Aviation is well aware of the Eagle program, Hepburn explained. The truth is, CitationPartners even uses the old Cessna three-pennant logo from the corporate’s piston past. “There’s been little or no pushback,” he said. And, Textron Aviation advantages from Excel Eagle owners who take part in the ProParts hourly parts cost program, not to say making service centers available to work on Eagles. “For those who need factory support, you’ll be able to get it. There’s goodness for each [of us].”
Doing the Work
The CitationPartners team doesn’t do the work on the aircraft, although Hepburn puts his maintenance background to work when researching a customer’s airplane to be sure that it qualifies for the Eagle treatment. At the identical time, he can evaluate the inspection status to be sure that any near-term work is finished at the identical time so the client doesn’t need to bring the airplane in for an inspection or maintenance event soon after delivery.
“We will deliver it freed from any major inspections for a 12 months,” said Hepburn. Some inspections might be deferred, for an extra fee, but generally, it’s much cheaper to do the work while the airplane is down for the Eagle upgrade.
CitationPartners has contracted with Yingling Aviation at Wichita’s Eisenhower National Airport to do the Eagle upgrade. This includes the Garmin G5000 avionics package, a custom interior, maintenance, and inspections to enroll in ProParts (which comes with no enrollment fee or for existing ProParts customers, lower hourly rates), and complete strip and repaint. “Yingling has been a superb partner,” Hay said.
Once inducted, CitationPartners hires local test pilots to fly the Excel and note any discrepancies. The corporate team members monitor all of the work and once an airplane is finished, the test pilots conduct final flight tests in preparation for delivery.
Greater than 1,100 Excels and XLSs are still flying and will qualify for the Eagle upgrade. CitationPartners and Yingling can handle as much as two upgrades per thirty days as Yingling’s technicians have turn out to be more efficient and have lowered the time for the Eagle conversion to 4 months from five. “We expect [the uptake rate] will speed up,” said Russ Meyer. “We all know who owns every Excel.”
Upgrade Options
The complete Citation Eagle upgrade costs $1.55 million, and this includes avionics, interior, and paint in addition to as much as $25,000 value of repairs, if needed. The Garmin G5000 avionics suite weighs about 200 kilos lower than the Honeywell avionics that it replaces, and there’s a “modest” useful load increase of about 50 kilos on account of the necessity to install some ballast within the nose to keep up the unique weight and balance configuration. Eagle owners can use FlightSafety’s G5000-equipped level-D Excel simulator at its Wichita, Kansas learning center for differences and recurrent training.
Buyers of the Eagle upgrade get a bonus, in comparison with having the G5000 avionics done by a Garmin dealer. CitationPartners includes the optional Garmin Awareness & Protection package, which adds synthetic vision, Surface Watch, underspeed protection, and Flightstream 510 wireless gateway.
The avionics package comes with three multi-pane 14-inch displays, dual Garmin attitude and heading reference systems, two touchscreen controllers, integrated engine indicating and crew alerting system, GFC 700 autopilot with emergency descent mode, digital GWX 75 radar with advanced weather detection and avoidance technology, ADS-B Out and In, WAAS/LPV approaches, Mid-Continent Standby Attitude Module, and electronic charts. Available options are controller-pilot datalink communications (compatible with FAA Data Comm and EASA Link 2000+) and Garmin Iridium satcom for voice calling, messaging, and weather information.
Most original knobs and switches are retained, however the upgrade also adds an autopilot control panel under the forward fringe of the glareshield—replacing the crew alerting system (CAS) annunciator panel—and two primary flight display controllers. The unique pressurization system is unchanged and isn’t controlled by the brand new avionics. With the removal of the annunciator panel, CAS messages are actually displayed on the middle multifunction display.
Selecting the Interior
Customers have a number of options for his or her Eagle interiors, including three outfitting levels: sport, classic, or custom. Every occupant gets a USB-A and -C outlet. The client can select from quite a lot of optional add-ons equivalent to an Airtext bulkhead display/moving map or Gogo Business Aviation’s Avance L3 or L5 air-to-ground connectivity system.
Interior features include recent veneer, carpeting, sidewalls, window shades, upgraded seats, and custom plating.
Before the work starts, Citation Partners invites customers to go to Yingling Aviation to seek the advice of on the inside and paint design.
When it first launched, CitationPartners planned to purchase Excels after which do the upgrade and resell them. It did so with the primary six Eagle Excels, which were purchased from Textron Aviation. But all Excel models are getting hard to search out, with few coming in the marketplace. The last three Eagles were individual owner airplanes.
“We might love to accumulate them after they’re available at a practical price,” said Meyer Senior. “We do see some softening out there.”
“People hang onto them,” Hay said, and thus they’re ideal potential customers to make their aircraft like recent again.
“If we discover a used aircraft that comes in the marketplace, we’d take a look at it,” said Meyer III. “There usually are not many coming on now, the marketplace for the Excel could be very strong.”
One other attraction of the Eagle program is the bump in value, which Vref Aircraft Value Reference has acknowledged. “It’s very much well worth the transformation,” he said. “Vref bumps up the worth by $1.9 million, so financially it’s a robust sell. It almost makes the Eagle pay for itself.”