Citation Latitude Celebrates 500th Aircraft

By Garth Calitz

Textron Aviation has marked the rollout of the 500th Cessna Citation Latitude, just over a decade after the midsize business jet entered service. The milestone was celebrated by production employees at Textron Aviation’s Wichita facility, highlighting the aircraft’s sustained position within the company’s business jet portfolio.

The Citation Latitude entered service in August 2015 and quickly became one of Textron Aviation’s best-selling business jets. The aircraft reached its 240th delivery within five years, making it the fastest-selling business jet in the company’s history at the time. Production passed the 400-aircraft mark in 2024, and the latest milestone brought the total to 500 aircraft.

“The rollout of the 500th Citation Latitude is a testament to the employees who build this aircraft with dedication and pride every day,” said Eric Cardinali, Textron Aviation senior vice president of manufacturing. “This milestone is only possible because of the skill of our workforce and the trust customers continue to place in our products.”

The Latitude represented something of a departure from the traditional Citation formula when it was unveiled at the 2011 NBAA Convention. The aircraft introduced the first flat-floor cabin in the Citation family and featured the first completely new fuselage cross-section for the range in four decades.

That redesign translated into a noticeably more spacious cabin. The Citation Latitude can accommodate up to nine passengers, although a typical executive configuration carries seven or eight occupants, generally arranged around club seating. The cabin has a six-foot interior height, giving passengers considerably more room to move around than many earlier Citation designs.

Powered as a midsize twinjet, the Latitude combines its relatively spacious cabin with performance suited to longer business missions. With four passengers aboard, the aircraft has a published high-speed cruise range of approximately 2,700 nautical miles, while reaching a high-speed cruise of around 446 ktas.

The aircraft has also become a familiar sight in large managed business-jet fleets, most notably NetJets, where the Latitude has formed an important part of the operator's midsize fleet strategy. Its combination of cabin space, operating economics and Citation commonality has helped broaden its appeal beyond individual corporate operators and into the large-scale fractional and charter markets.

Reaching 500 aircraft is therefore more than a production statistic. For Textron Aviation, it demonstrates that the Latitude has developed into a durable member of the Citation family rather than simply filling a temporary gap in the company's product line.

The milestone also illustrates the longevity of the basic Latitude design. More than ten years after the first aircraft entered service, production continues at Wichita, while the aircraft remains positioned between the lighter Citation models and Textron Aviation's larger super-midsize offerings.

With the 500th aircraft now rolling out of the Wichita production line, the Citation Latitude has firmly established itself as one of the company's modern Citation success stories — and another example of how a clean-sheet cabin design can extend the useful life of a business-jet concept well beyond its initial market launch.