Photo above – Textron Aviation employees and representatives from Scotts Miracle-Gro celebrated this significant milestone with a special delivery ceremony at Textron Aviation headquarters in Wichita.
Textron Aviation announced it has delivered a Cessna Citation Longitude to Scotts Miracle-Gro. This jet represents the 8,000th Cessna Citation jet delivered worldwide, reinforcing the Citation family as the most popular line of business jets in the world. Scotts Miracle-Gro is one of the world’s largest marketers of branded consumer products for lawn and garden care and a long-time Citation owner. This is the fifth Cessna Citation in the company’s fleet.
“A milestone like this wouldn’t be possible without all the owners and operators who love to fly our aircraft and trust the reliability and versatility of our Citation products. With more than 41 million flight hours across the globe, our customers continue to make Citation jets their aircraft of choice,” said Textron Aviation President and CEO Ron Draper. “I also want to thank our extraordinary workforce. Each and every one of you played a part in reaching the 8,000th Citation delivery.”
Cessna Citations are renowned for their ability to combine reliability, efficiency and comfort with advanced technology and class-leading performance, and no other family of business jets offers such a seamless progression of aircraft with extraordinary capabilities.
“The Citation is one of the most functional and reliable brands in the general aviation industry and I, along with the members of our flight department, congratulate Textron Aviation on the delivery of its 8,000 Citation aircraft,” said Jim Hagedorn, chief executive officer of Scotts Miracle-Gro, a personal owner of the Citation CJ4, and former U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot. “Reaching this milestone is a credit to the Cessna brand, which represents quality, design and attention to the entire flying experience — all things we were looking for as we add to our fleet of business jets.”
Cessna Citation innovations
Since Cessna delivered its first Citation in 1972, it has set the standard in the business jet market. Citation jets have been the number one business jet by annual delivery volume for 40 years: from 1972-1974, 1979-1981, 1984-2012, and 2016-2020.
The Citation series of business jets has evolved to offer an unmatched range of capabilities, systems and options that allows customers to expand their business reach. More than 30 Citation models have been certified over the 50-year history of the Citation line. There are currently six Citation models in production: Citation M2 Gen2, Citation CJ3+, Citation CJ4 Gen2, Citation XLS Gen2, Citation Latitude and Citation Longitude.
