This is a flight to the Fort Myers Page Field airport in the Cessna Citation Excel. The Excel is a twin engine medium size private jet with a range of 1,700 nm. It carries 9 passengers and cruises at 420 kts. This is a vlog style video of what it’s like to work as a corporate pilot.
Flying the Citation M2, the newest version of the Cessna Citation Jet. The M2 is an absolute pleasure to fly. It’s an upgrade of the original CJ that has six passenger seats and is powered by the dependable Williams FJ-144 engines. It cruises at 400 knots and has the original service ceiling of 41,000 ft. The instrument panel has been completely redone and is now dominated by the three panel Garmin 3000. The new Garmin avionics are incredibly capable but, require a steep learning curve. FlightSafety is now requiring any pilot upgrading to the M2, who doesn’t have previous Garmin 3000 experience, to take a one time two day course on the avionics suite. 
Half the switches are gone and the systems they controlled are now selected and managed through the Garmin touch controllers, GTU’s. This isn’t always a plus. Now instead of just flipping a fan switch, you have to flip through a couple of pages to get to the selection option. The avionics master switch has been removed and when you turn on the battery the avionics come on. This is an odd adjustment if you transitioned from aircraft that would drain the battery in ten minutes if everything is powered up. The avionics now have their own full size battery. Systems are powered by the original battery. With the loss of both generators, and both batteries fully charged, you now have one hour till the total loss of avionics power. A properly managed electrical failure in this airplane is almost a non event. You still have one full panel in front of the pilot providing all the required information. Some of the other changes are the removal of one of the engine fire bottles, no inverters due to the fact that all lights are now LED’s and all equipment requiring ac power have integral inverters. 
The aircraft now has little winglets I like to call them stubies but, they are more for marketing appeal than anything else. Cessna had originally planed to provide the M2 with an option for an electric windshield but, recently announced that they had discontinued any plans to do so. In this video we go out for some training before picking up our clearance to Punta Gorda Florida. Some of the basic weights are maximum ramp weight 10,800 lbs., Maximum takeoff weight 10,700 lbs, maximum landing weight 9,900 lbs. Maximum fuel is 3,296 lbs and fuel burn is 800 the first hour then 700 lbs and 600 lbs.
A year of charter and corporate flying in the Cessna Citation Encore, Citation II, Citation Mustang. Citation Excel and the beechcraft King Air 350. This is a representative video of a year of flying with cockpit views of takeoffs and landings.
A short video made with a friends go pro camera of a steep turn in the Cessna Citation Mustang and a wide angle view of the cockpit. After practicing a couple of turns we head west to Wichita for a check ride in the Mustang.
This video is a year of corporate flying in 5 minutes. It’s mostly takeoffs, landings and approaches or what I like to call the fun part of the job. I enjoy what I do and like to share that experience in my videos. In actuality, over a years’ time, I’ve flown many more flights and in more airplanes than are shown in the video. So this video is more of an attempt to give you the feel of flying as a charter pilot than a day by day account. Unfortunately, I don’t always have the chance to pull out my camera and capture what would have made great video so some of the coolest things I’ve seen I didn’t get in the video. The aircraft in the video are the Cessna Citation Mustang, Citation Encore, Citation II, Citation Excel and a Beechcraft King Air 350. Some of the video is taken while acting as the pilot or co-pilot. A few of the included scenes are of the aircraft cockpits and the cabin. The name of the music is “Full Throttle”
A Cessna Citation makes a Winter landing on runway 36 at the Fond Du Lac County Airport (FLD) in Wisconsin. With snow covering the ground it’s hard to pick out the runway till getting fairly close to the airport. The large flat area to the northeast of the field is frozen lake Winnebago. This airport is just 14 miles south of the Oshkosh airport and acts as a reliever during the yearly fly in. During the EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh Fond du lac is a popular stopping spot for aviators who want camp next to their airplanes and avoid the more crowded traffic pattern at the Oshkosh airport.
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| Citation Encore Master Warning Panel |
A Cessna Citation Encore (CE-560) waits out a severe thunder storm next to a United Airlines Airbus 319 on the holding pad at Washington Dulles Airport. Both aircraft are turned into the gust front and the rain can be seen moving across the ramp. The wind registered 46 kts or plus 50 mph on the standby attitude indicator, “the little one” but it was probably higher sense it only registers the portion of wind that goes straight into the pitot tube. The primary airspeed indicator on the flight display doesn’t register airspeed till it reaches a minimum of 60 kts. The inflight portion of the video shows the cabin, cockpit, and instrument panel with the master warning test activated so that the warning lights are illuminated. The landing is at Chicago O’Hare airport.
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| G1000 Multi Function Display |
A short single pilot Mustang trip from Columbia Missouri to Spirit of St Louis Airport. This IFR trip has low ceilings and visibility on both ends. If you’ve never flown single pilot IFR the autopilot serves as your copilot. The Citation 510 has an integrated Garmin 1000 avionics suite which really makes the whole single pilot IFR experience so much easier. The large panel moving terrain display on the MFD is a huge help with situational awareness. The trip itself is only about 20 minutes long but it’s a busy 20 minutes. IFR COU to SUS with an ILS to 26L.
A Cessna Citation CE560 takes off from Spirit of St. Louis airport (SUS) at sunset, climbs out over st Louis and makes a night Landing at Nashville International Airport (BNA)on runway 31. The middle of the video during this IFR flight is a night view of the aircraft cockpit.
The Cessna Citation Excel, also known as the 560XL, is a comfortable highly reliable medium-sized private turbofan jet manufactured by Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas. In its design of the Citation 560XL Cessna blended it’s previously popular designs by using a shortened Citation X standup cabin attached to a Citation V wing and tail. They then added the highly efficient Pratt & Whitney Canada PW500 turbofan to power this roomy business jet. For easy landings, trailing link landing gear was added to give the pilot the ability to make those glassy smooth landings over and over again. In its standard configuration it has 8 plush passenger seats and a fully enclosed lavatory. During its production run 308 were built then Cessna switched to building the 560XLS with upgraded PW545B engines with even better performance. In the Excel cockpit pilot work load is reduced by the integrated Honeywell Primus 1000 avionics suite and Full Authority Digital Engine control for the engines. To set engine power the flying pilot simply advances the throttles to the appropriate detent and the FADEC system adjust all engine parameters for the requested power setting. This aircraft is a top of the line performer with its straight laminar wing and large turbo fan engines. it can take off in 3,590 feet and climb to cruise altitude in just 18 minutes. This airplane is easy to fly and great for short runways and high altitude airports like Eagle and aspen. Maximum takeoff weight 20,200 lbs Cruise speed: 435 ktas Range: 1,700 nm Service ceiling: 45,000 ft Rate of climb: 3,500 ft/min
Video is of a Cessna Citation Excel 560xl takeoff, landing, cockpit and interior cabin.