Overview of Cessna Aircraft Company - a giant in small aircraft manufacturing

10 December 2009

Located in Wichita, Kansas, USA, the Cessna Aircraft Company is one of the country's most renowned airplane manufacturing companies. Cessna is most famous for their smaller aircrafts, driven by pistons, but in recent years, the company has taken the plunge into the upscale market, developing and releasing business-class jets, including the luxury CitationJet.

This is due to the large base that Textron, Cessna's parent company, has. Cessna was first founded by Clyde Vernon Cessna, born in Iowa in 1879. After other business ventures in related fields, Clyde formed his own company, the Cessna Aircraft Company, in 1927.

Always interested in monoplanes, Clyde began building the type of planes he wanted - a vision of his ideal aircraft. His first major plane was the full-cantilever-winged monoplane called the Phantom. The Phantom, along with other Cessna originals like the Model AW and DC-6, were experiencing moderate success until the Great Depression hit. Instead of focusing on building and selling planes, Clyde and his son Eldon had refocused, putting emphasis on building racing planes.

Read the rest of this entry »