By Rod Douglas
Pilots are a mad lot. Logical, totally committed to safety, but mad. Most of us will do anything for a truly unique experience that has to do with wings and I’ll put up my hand as the epitome of this contagion.
Thursday morning, 3.15 am. The alarm wakes me with that jarring sound that only ever emerges in a hotel room. I’d had a late night hosting Greening Australia Queensland’s 25th Anniversary Dinner, with 200 odd guests being well fed, watered and shocked by a hard hitting global warming presentation that left everyone feeling guilty for living. And I’m going flying. In fact I’m going to be doing lots of flying today.
Today is the day I get to fly the amazing Citation Sovereign.
For most people who fly, corporate jets are the mythical Everest of a life spent exploring the skies. Powerful beyond belief, they cost thousands of dollars per hour to operate, millions of dollars to buy and are crewed by people with thousands of hours’ experience. A type rating will take you a week, if not weeks, in a simulator and every year you’ll be back for recurrence training. The safety record of professionally crewed corporate jets matches that of the airlines, and the machines are often treated with the kid gloves and care that a hard working airliner (think luxurious bus) would never receive.
I can still remember with a vividness burnt into my memory my first flight in a corporate jet. It was 18 years ago, but seems just yesterday. It was a simple repositioning flight in a Sabreliner 65. I was a low time pilot filling the right seat for an enormously experience pilot. No passengers. No knowledge on my behalf. I’d earnt the privilege by doing a short notice (and horrible) 16 hour flight in an Archer from San Diego to Chicago. The reward was worth it.
Back then in the States co-pilots didn’t require type ratings. I don’t know if that is still the case, but it allowed me to build time and fly some great equipment. If I did it again today, with age, a little wisdom and a lot more experience on my side I’d probably like a type rating. I still vividly remember that first takeoff. Mike, easily the best instructor I’ve flown with, talked me through. The rotation took my breath away as those desperately noisy jet engines punched us into the sky. The exhilarating performance and an altimeter almost spinning skyward, had me mesmerised and it wasn’t until Mike asked, as we climbed through 3,000 feet, if we were flying all the way to Miami with the wheels down that I remembered that it was just an aircraft and that you still had to fly it like every other aircraft.
That was the first of many memorable flights with Mike. When I left the States in 1991 to come home, I knew it would be the end of my jet flying for a very long time. And it was.
I jumped on Virgin’s five am flight out of Brisbane bound for Sydney. It was only a few short months ago I wrote in one of my articles about Australia’s banal flying weather. Then the skies opened up, much of the drought was replaced with floods and I’ve added more IFR time this summer than I have in the past five years. Today was one of those days. We climbed out through a solid overcast at about 2,500 feet and slipped through quiet mediation into stiff upright sleep.
After fighting the Sydney traffic I made it out to Bankstown Airport in plenty of time for our 10 am departure. Aeromil’s facility at Bankstown is an appropriate reflection of the service and quality that the Cessna Citation distributor for Australia brings to everything they do. Comfortable, if not plush, offices attached to a large maintence hangar house the team who are tasked with continuing to make Cessna Citation jets the choice of enlightened Australian business people who understand that their time is truly money and that a corporate jet can, and does, put dollars on the bottom line.
My hosts today are Nick Jones, Aeromil’s director of sales and Robert Hollander, Asia Pacific Vice President for Citation Sales with Cessna. After a glass of water and chat about the Australian sales trip, the happenings of the Singapore Airshow, and the general market for Cessna aircraft (very buoyant and expect to wait), it was time to go and meet the Sovereign.
I have to admit I was unprepared for what I discovered. I’d been talking with Peter Lang, the exceptionally professional media relations man at Aeromil to arrange to fly the Sovereign. We’d discussed me flying a sector in the right seat. He’d asked if I had a Sovereign type rating to which I just laughed. With about 400 hours in the right seat of 500 series Citations all those years ago how different could it be? Peter told me that Cessna’s chief pilot, Mike Walton, would be flying and that we could probably organise the right seat as he was also their chief instructor.
Well, we walked out through the maintenance hangar and there, sitting on the ramp, was one seriously large and seriously expensive, (think USD$17 mil by the time they can deliver you one), Sovereign. Undoubtedly I shouldn’t be admitting to this complete lack of preparation, but being so far away from the corporate jet action (when I lived in San Diego, Palomar, the airfield I flew out of, had more jets on the field than we had on the Australian register), I have only watched the development of the Citation range from afar.
And what a range it is. From the original and venerable 500 series Citation, Cessna has expanded their range in both directions to now offer 10 individual models that starts with the Mustang VLJ (although Cessna prefers to position the Mustang as a light jet, it fits the VLJ category), five light jet models from the CJ1+ though the Encore+, three mid size jets which includes the Sovereign as the mid range, mid speed offer, and finishing with the recently announced Columbia which positions Cessna, for the first time, in direct competition with the large cabin jet market against the likes of Gulfstream and Challenger.
Cessna has taken a similar approach to most of the major airframe manufacturers and have built their models up on standard barrels. The light jet barrel offers five options, the mid jet barrel three with individual offers in the VLJ and large cabin segments. One would expect that over time those barrels will be adapted for more line extension.
So, with my 500 series experience as my reference, it was certainly a shock to walk out and see just how enormous the Sovereign is. At a little over 30,550 lbs (13.8 tonnes) at gross ramp weight this is a big, big airplane. With a wing span of 19.3 m and an overall length of 19.35m, the 6.2m high tail gives this superbly finished aircraft a majestic air. Parked tight against the hangar with its wings projecting far over the grass, the scale of the aircraft is very impressive. At that very moment I looked up to see the deep purple of an intense front moving rapidly towards the airport. I also made a snap decision -which I may well regret in the future - that I was simply unequipped to fly this beast no matter who was sitting in the left seat.
The reality is that I have no idea if the boys from Cessna were going to offer me the right seat because I leapt up the beautifully appointed air stair, danced through the cabin opening and selected the left front facing lounge chair of the beautifully appointed double club that faced me.
As I relaxed into divine leather hides that stretched softly over the seats my eyes closed for a moment, and I fantasized about just how wealthy I’d need to be to be able to climb into one of these seats every time I needed to move myself from home to Melbourne (or anywhere else in the country). I’ve always had a rule never to spend more than 25% of my salary for a year on any car I’ve driven. It’s always been a good discipline, that’s kept me motivated to earn more and drive more beautiful cars. So to afford a new Sovereign I’d need to be earning about $80 million a year. If any of the seriously rich were silly enough to use my system then the Australian market for this beautiful piece of machinery is probably about 150 people.
I guess if I had the capacity to make that sort of money every year then the operating costs, based on the average number of hours flown by corporate jets worldwide (400), of USD$890k would hardly be a concern. (Naturally I’m assuming that I’ve paid cash – to lease the aircraft would add about another cool $200k per month to the bill).
I popped out of the fantasy to wander down the back to stow my luggage in the large internal baggage closet that sits behind the full size lavatory which, by the way, can double as a stand up dressing room. With solid sliding (and beautifully crafted and polished) timber doors, a flushing toilet and a vanity sink with hot and cold water (and gold plated taps), this is one of those toilets that it’s a delight to use. The closet is more than big enough to stow multiple garment bags, brief cases, lap tops and all the other paraphernalia that a serious road warrior simply must have. Naturally there is a large 135 cu ft external baggage locker externally for the big bags which is about 30% larger than its closest competitor.
Sitting myself back down, I let what is a truly luxurious cabin caress my eyes. N158SV is set out in a typical eight place, double club arrangement, with the high capacity interiors for up to 12 passengers available. With a stand up cabin with 1.7 m of head room and 7.2 m long, you can actually stand up and walk around which is critical in an aircraft that is transcontinental under all usual seasonal conditions in Australia. With a maximum range of 2,847 nm, Perth – Sydney, Melbourne – Broome or Hobart – Darwin are all easily possible. With a maximum cruise speed of 0.8 mach (465 knots) or an economy cruise of 415 knots this is one fast bird that suits Australian conditions and will surely be attractive to the many emerging mining magnates that need the range and mobility.
Aeromil maintenance was a busy place on this particular morning. There were five jets in the hangar and on the ramp and getting moving was a fairly significant logistics exercise. With a LAME on each wing tip and another watching to ensure that the big dual tyre main gear didn’t fall off the tarmac and into the squelch of the very wet grass we carefully pulled out for Bankstown’s 29 centre.
Looking forward up the aisle I could see that we would be departing into the bowels of the abysmal front that continued creeping towards the airport. Black and threatening, I could see the magenta of the weather radar and I know that if I was in the Cirrus, I’d be sitting on the ground and waiting.
The twin Pratt & Whitney PW306C turbo fans are rated at 5,770 lbs (27.67 kN) of thrust each and give the Sovereign a snappy performance. At max weight and standard ISA temperatures, the balanced field length is an impressive 1,109 m. This gives the owner the choice of literally hundreds of Australian airfields and gives extraordinary utility.
Finally cleared for takeoff, we taxied on to the runway. With the brakes held and the turbofans spooling up, the experience of a max power takeoff was truly exhilarating. When the brakes came off the G-force set in, driving me back into the soft luxury of the leather enveloping me as we accelerated through VR of 109 kts and leapt into the air. With the deck angle climbing rapidly, we accelerated to 250 kts and the better than 4000 ft/m that makes short shift of even the most challenging weather.
And wasn’t I glad it did, as we dived deep into the black sky at about 2000 feet. With the typical high wing loading of this type of jet, dealing with weather is just part of the mission. On this particular time, at this particular place in the sky, it was simply a rough ride. Fortunately it was a very short rough ride. Ten minutes into the flight we exploded out of weather into the crystal blue sky at 31,000 feet. Man, O man how I love jet solutions to bad weather.
Down the back we’d been talking about global warming. My role in Greening Australia generated much discussion about the rap that aviation is taking in the creation of carbon emissions in the environment. Not surprisingly, Robert’s view was that aviation, with a 3.4% contribution to the emissions, was being unfairly targeted by the environmental movement. My view is that the environmental movement is simply doing what it can rationally be expected to do. Focus on the place that will influence the decision makers. Decision makers use corporate and airline flight disproportionally and it’s a great way to get them to take notice.
While the discussion was interesting and clearly off the record, my further research indicated that Jack Pelton, Cessna’s CEO, has the carbon contribution of his product firmly on the radar screen. In a speech to the Atlanta Aero Club in October 2007 he identified this issue as number three behind the need for the modernisation of airspace management and the worldwide shortage of pilots. Cessna continues to strive for better fuel efficiency and this has made each evolution of their product greener. Clearly this will continue to accelerate, especially as the world moves rapidly towards a market that will be forced to pay for the environmental cost of embedded carbon within fuels which is likely in a carbon constrained world.
Once we’d popped out into the clear I wandered forward to have a chat with the pair of captains occupying both the best seats in the house. The cockpit is a beautiful workspace. With four 20 X 25 cm landscape LCD screens, the panel real estate is uncluttered and makes for an effective attractive installation of the Honeywell Epic avionics suite.
The Epic suite provides redundancy upon redundancy. With full manual reversion available from either of the PFD’s to either the MFD or the Crew Alerting System (EICAS) screen, no pilot should ever need to use the three emergency backup instruments that fill the real estate between the panels. Mounted at eye level are the dual redundant panels for autopilot control. The heads provide a complete set of simple controls from which the aircraft can be guided. Set into the top of the centre pedestal are the dual Flight Management Systems (FMS). Fully integrated into the Epic suite, they provide full flight regime navigation management and obviously feature a world wide database. The system integrates dual WAAS compliant GPS receivers plus VOR-DME and DME –DME cross referencing to ensure highly accurate positioning anywhere around the globe. With a full alpha numeric keyboard they control all programming of the flight plans, plus radio and aid tuning.
The pilots described the Sovereign as ‘a hoot’ to fly. With plenty of power and responsive controls, it’s a well behaved aircraft that follows the Citation reputation for being plenty fun to fly but with good manners that give it a safe and secure reputation. Treated well, the aircraft will always make the pilots look good.
When serious weather is about the Sovereign provides plenty of options, particularly considering its class of jet. Certified to 47,000 feet, it is capable of leaping over most of the weather that Australia can dish out and, with the cabin pressurisation of 9.3 psi, a sea level cabin can be maintained until a smidge past 25,000 ft. Even right up high the cabin is still at a comfortable 7,230 ft equivalent altitude.
When it comes time to come down there are lots of options. The speed brakes have no speed limitations upon them and quickly send the VSI rocketing downward. With the excellent pressurisation system, rapid descents have little effect upon the passengers enjoying the ride in the back. First stage of flap becomes available at 250 kts, the gear can come out at 210 kts, second stage of flaps at 200 kts, with full flaps (35o) at 175 kts. With a VREF speed of 107 kts it’s clear that a managed descent comes with plenty of options.
About now we reached top of descent and the boys were starting to get busy. After checking out the delightfully appointed refreshment centre that sits opposite the forward air stair door, I decided to amble back down the back and try out the head. As with the luxury of the big wide comfy seats versus those tight little sardine spaces they sell on today’s airlines, the toilet experience was truly sublime. From the silky smooth sliding of the cabinetry, to the comfy seat and time and space to think. What more could a wealthy business person want than a little place to hide from all her guests, to compose and prepare for the next strategy to take over the world?
I eventually dragged myself back to my regular seat and tested out the great work desk that sits between each of the club sets. As with everything on this category of aircraft, the engineering in the simple retraction and extension of the folding desk deserved to be marvelled at. Inside the concealed nook behind the desk slide was the satellite phone. I was tempted to phone home to find out what all the ordinary people were doing, but managed to contain myself and started exploring the LCD entertainment centre instead.
By now we had punched back into the clouds and it was time to slide the chair back outboard and secure. Through yet another marvel of engineering, each chair not only reclines but also allows you to slide into the centre walkway to give you an extra 15 centimetres of space. It will also pivot and I suspect that if you asked it really nicely it would figure out a way to give you the next dance, and ensure you enjoyed it.
Locked back down, the shoulder strap reconnected, we began manoeuvering on vectors to intercept the 19 ILS for the approach. My focus was assessing passenger ride through what was less than comfortable weather. The pilots were letting the ‘George’ do all the work and the autopilot flew a smooth and flawless approach through quite bumpy chop. The pilots allowed the coupled approach to continue until they disconnected and flew a beautiful landing touching down on the keys and turning off very early. I would be surprised if we used more than about 800m of runway.
After a little confusion, the boys figured out where Aeromil is on the field and we taxied across to park amongst the heavy maintence that was being carried out on some transport category jets. Engine start to engine stop was 72 minutes with flight time of 59 minutes and a fuel burn of 1,800 lbs.
Exiting the plane gave me the opportunity to experience more of the remarkable engineering that goes into making corporate jets into the truly superb time machines they are. The air stair door, with a unique over centre cam, is simple, light and foolproof to operate. It opens softly and allows you to step out and alight with style. As I stepped down to do a proper walk around and discover more of the mysteries, I imagined myself stepping out, as many celebrities do, to a crowd eagerly awaiting my talents. It was short lived as a desperately pragmatic LAME called out to ask how long we might be staying.
As I walked around this very big jet I realised a couple of things. Firstly, while they don’t come with the triple redundancy that is expected of large transport category jets, the Cessna attitude is to ensure that there is at least double redundancy for all the major systems. The rudder cables are duplicated. Dual hydraulic lines run to the brakes. Everywhere you looked good, pragmatic engineering dominates to ensure the safety and longevity of the aircraft. Beyond that, the same commitment to excellence is demonstrated as one explores the maintence hatches and access spaces. The avionic racks contain hot swappable cards that allow a two minute swap out of a faulty card to improve the reliability of this very valuable and very expensive piece of capital equipment that seeks to deliver one effective outcome… the saving of time for very wealthy people.
As I raced back out the front of the facility, to jump into a cab, to race to the terminal on the other side of the airport, to catch yet another flight to Melbourne, I realised it is true. Pilots are a mad lot. One short taste of the Sovereign and I was hooked. I’d do just about anything to get to fly it again (and yes I am regretting not at least asking the boys if I could occupy the right seat).
I doubt, however, that there are many pilot-owned and flown Sovereigns in the world. For the people who will buy one I expect that they will be relying on the reputation that Cessna has built across its fleet of over 5,100 Citations, which is by far the largest business jet fleet in the world. I think they’ll be motivated by a combination of time saved, convenience and ego. For someone with the need to fly all over Australia it would seem that the Citation Sovereign could be the ideal machine. It’s clear that Cessna has done it again. Developing and delivering an exceptional aircraft that is safe, competitive and affordable and makes good on all its promises.
