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The New Citation X; Retaining the name that started it all

Much to customers’ delight, the Citation X name will live on. When the plans were drawn to improve on the Citation X systems and performance, that aircraft was to be called the “Citation TEN”. Through the design and certification process, the Citation TEN has claimed the title of world’s fastest business jet, but customers have told Cessna that they prefer the new aircraft retain the Citation X name.

“You can see customer input present throughout the entire process,” said Roxanne Bernstein, senior vice president of Marketing. “We’ve implemented customer input with various designs, we value customer feedback with services, and we also listen to the customer when it comes to guidance with naming our aircraft. Customers value the performance and system improvements with the updated aircraft, the fact that the new Citation X is the world’s fastest business jet with a top speed of Mach 0.935, and they value the original name. So Cessna has decided that, moving forward, this aircraft will be called the new Citation X.”

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World's Fastest Civil Airplane
The weather the week I was slated to fly the X+ was terrible, with really active convective weather systems peppering the map all along the I-35 corridor from central Texas to Kansas. Even after getting to Wichita a day late, the weather was still a factor. After a relatively calm night, the next day's regional map was yellow and red with active cells popping up everywhere, including a couple just west of Wichita and heading our way.

After a briefing on the product and the flight, I headed out to the X+ with Cessna flight-test pilot Jeff Tibbitts and reserve pilot Curt Epp. We'd be flying a company demonstrator with an Experimental designation, but only because it lacked a few software updates. For all outward ­appearances, the airplane was what customers would be getting.

From the big carbon brakes to the big baggage compartment to the ­single-point fueling system, the walk-around gave me a chance to see firsthand the kind of brilliant engineering that went into the original X. Make no mistake about it: The X+ is a beautifully enhanced version of an already great airplane.

We climbed aboard, and while Jeff consulted with the dispatcher I toured the cabin with Curt. He pointed out the stretch in the fuselage, making a special point to demonstrate how the forward club seats are much more comfortable than in the original X. We sat in facing seats and stretched our legs. There was room for both of us. Nice. It's a remarkable improvement. We checked out the new seats too. Lighter, more comfortable and with greater travel in all directions, the new in-house-designed seats give passengers the ability to get comfortable whether the trip is a 6.5-hour hop form Teterboro to London or a shorter jaunt.

Rocket Ship to Ponca City
The weather was looking dicey, with a big cell moving our way but taking its time, so we had a good window for takeoff so long as we were gone within the hour. By the time we'd be heading back, however, the cell would very likely be over KICT with possibly severe weather.

I climbed into the front left seat. The cockpit has been completely redesigned, and despite the fact that I'd never flown an airplane outfitted with the G5000 cockpit before, I felt comfortable with the setup, thanks in part to my relative familiarity with G2000 in a couple of airplanes, including the Cessna TTx, and G3000 in a couple more, including the M2 and CJ2+ Alpine Edition.

The layout of the cockpit was remarkably clean for such a sophisticated jet, and the avionics suite was designed to funnel the focus of the many chores a pilot has to do to fly such a marvel into a single point. Everything you need to do, pre-start to shutdown checklists, landing/takeoff data, weight and balance, systems monitoring, flight management, radar, satellite communications, audio, environmental, emergency management, charting and much more, is all accessible right in front of the pilots' eyes on the big, bright Garmin displays. There are still a number of physical buttons, knobs, switches and levers, but that number is very small. The panel is an absolute work of art, and the system walks the pilots though the preflight checks, prompting them to run checks on the various systems and warning them if any check has not been completed or if the airplane is not properly configured for any phase of flight.

One of the least beautiful parts of the picture — the autothrottles — are arguably the most beautiful from a design perspective. Cessna took a bit of a risk and signed Garmin to supply the autothrottles for its new lineup of airplanes, including the Sovereign+, the Latitude and the Citation X+. It paid off. Garmin came through with a product that is a perfect fit for the mission of the X+.

After firing up the big Rolls engines, we taxied out. Like its predecessor, the X+ is taxied with a tiller mounted on the left sidewall ledge, though you can make small turns using the rudder pedals to steer the nosewheel. Once on the runway, you can forget about the tiller and just fly.

The plan was to head up to altitude, do some speed checks (yeah, I wanted to see how fast it would go too), and then head over to Ponca City for lunch while waiting for the weather to move through Wichita.

After we were cleared for takeoff on Runway 19L, I taxied into position, took my hand off the tiller and got ready to rock and roll. Jeff had warned me earlier that everyone on a first flight in the X rotates a little, gets surprised and then "corrects" by pitching back down. His advice was to rotate, and then instead of pitching down, pitch up some more. I was committed to being the guy who didn't do the wrong thing, so I channeled the steely nerve of aerobatics star Sean Tucker and readied myself for the cool angle of attack Jeff had warned me about.

Once we were lined up, and not before, I armed the autothrottles, stood up the levers and felt them come alive and move forward. We were out of there, and it was the best ride I've ever had in a bizjet. It was simply cool. Keeping the X+ on the centerline was easy, and as Jeff called out rotate, I did, focusing on keeping the pitch right there. At the point where the nose went skyward, I could see why he'd warned me, but I just added a little more up elevator and peeked over to see Jeff smiling.

Gear and flaps up and we were climbing to heaven. It's not a fighter jet, but for us civilian types, it sure felt like it. With an initial rate of climb of better than 3,500 fpm and an unrestricted normal climb speed of 300 knots, it gets it done. The X+ is capable of climbing directly (that is, without an intermediate level-off) to 43,000 feet in just 23 minutes.

After a few minutes we asked ATC for an altitude that Jeff tells me always gets a "say again" from the controllers and other pilots on frequency: 51,000 feet. The nice thing is that, once they get their head around it, the request never takes long to get approved, because there's seldom any conflicting traffic.

The unusual thing that day was that we didn't get above the tops of the surrounding weather until FL 490, so when we topped out at 510, it was a great sight. We were in the clear finally and seeing a dramatic curvature of the earth, so much so that we could hardly tell we were in Kansas anymore. At FL 510 we were seeing 200 knots indicated (a few knots "slower" than in my Cirrus at 15,000 on the way back to Austin later that day), but that 200 kias in the X+ translated to Mach 0.845 and just 700 pounds of fuel per side per hour. For the record, that's a lot faster and a lot more fuel than in my SR22.

Because of the weather still thundering on through Midcontinent we decided it was necessary to divert to Ponca City to wait out the storm at the only sensible place to do so, ­Enrique's, an on-airport Mexican food joint that is always packed and always worth the trip. Two tips: Don't fill up on the chips, and say "yes" to gorditas.

After lunch we took off from Ponca and headed out IFR at 8,000 feet — it was a short trip — I flew and kept it under 250 knots as we made our way to KICT. We got vectors around stubborn parts of the storm and eventually worked our way around to the northwest for the ILS for 19L. The autothrottles are smart, automatically reducing their target speed as you change configuration. With the first notch of flaps, the flight control system sets the speed to 200 knots, which the throttles maintain. At flaps two, that drops to 170, and then 145 with full flaps.

I let the autopilot fly the intercept and turned it off as we intercepted the glideslope, leaving the autothrottles on, hand-flying and letting them control my airspeed. The weather wasn't too bad, barely IFR, and we broke out with good visibility. At 50 feet the autothrottles automatically went to idle thrust and Jeff reminded me, "Don't flare." I didn't. I planted the airplane, put the nose gear on the ground and then got on the brakes, hoping the passengers had all listened to our pre-landing announcement so they wouldn't come suddenly forward for an impromptu cockpit visit.

If there's any doubt about it, it's clear that Cessna has a winner in the Citation X+. An airplane that was already a strong performer gets more room, a better, more sophisticated and advanced cabin, even more speed, a remarkable new cockpit with autothrottles, better fuel efficiency, more payload and greater range. The only question that remains is whether one plus sign is really enough for this airplane. After my flight, I think it needs at least three or four.


Hand-flying the X+ as we climbed through cloud and murk and a bit of light to moderate turbulence was great fun, and the passengers seemed to be doing fine. Slow to fast, the control feel is very consistent. It's a very pleasing airplane to hand-fly.
How Fast?
Because of the big cell to the west, we headed south for 50 miles, climbing in steps up to 40,000 feet in order to get an idea of the speed of the X+. I set the power for max continuous and watched the airspeed climb ever higher. We were looking for 0.935 on the true airspeed indicator, but it wasn't to happen that day. We only saw 0.921 on Jeff's right-hand display. So while the X+ is certificated to 0.935, which means lots of pilots, including many in the FAA, have flown it to that speed, I missed out. (Maybe that means I'll get to try again?) At that speed we were burning 800 pounds per side and still getting a bit of chop (which can cut down on the airspeed at such high numbers very substantially).