XLent

It’s not surprising that the eight-to-12 seat Citation Excel and follow-on XLS is Cessna’s most popular model, for it is that most desirable of aircraft: a small and comparatively inexpensive airframe with a big interior.

Producing this widebodied light jet was a stroke of marketing genius, although developing it with a weight increase of little more than a tonne must have been quite an engineering challenge. Uniting essentially the Citation VII’s roomy, stand-up fuselage with a lengthened version of the docile, slow-flying Citation V series’ straight wing, powering this combination with a pair of lusty PW545s, and mounting it on the bigger Citations’ soft, long-travel, trailing-link landing gear, Cessna produced a remarkably capable all-rounder.