This, is the Citation Mustang, the Model 510, one of the best single-pilot very light
jets produced between 2006 and 2017 by Cessna. Launched at the 2002 NBAA convention,
the Model 510 first flew in 2005 and received its FAA type certification on September 8,
2006. With a total of 479 aircraft built, it is a sophisticated jet with an excellent fit
and finish, a friendly pilot interface, on-time performance, and a spacious and comfortable cabin.
Like many other light jets, the Mustang is approved for single-pilot operation,
and pilots are required to have a type rating to fly the Mustang.
The ground-breaking Mustang quickly set the standard in its category for pilots stepping
up to jet ownership and enjoyed tremendous success throughout its 12-year production run.
Thanks to its overall simplicity and honest performance, the Cessna Citation Mustang was
dubbed "the world’s most popular entry-level light jet." However, this success was short and Cessna
ended production of the design in May 2017 due to a lack of customer demand for the aircraft
as a result of competition from the company's own Cessna Citation M2. While offerings from Embraer,
Cirrus, and Honda are clean sheet designs built specifically to attack the Very Light Jet market,
the Citation Mustang is simply another iteration of a tried and tested family with half a century
of market presence. Cessna doesn’t call the Mustang a very light jet because it is not really
a revolutionary airplane as other VLJ makers say they will deliver, but an evolutionary airplane
that builds on the nearly 40 years of experience the company has in designing business jets.
The Mustang is the smallest of the Citations, just 40-feet 7-inches long, with a wingspan of 43-feet
2-inches and a height of 13-feet 5-inches. The Citation Mustang’s structural and aerodynamic
configuration draws inspiration from previous light Citation line members.
The aircraft’s construction is a low-wing cantilever design using mostly aluminum alloy,
with a swept wing supported by three spars and a high T-tail. Its tricycle landing gear has
characteristically short legs, common to both the Citation family and its smaller Learjet rivals.
The Mustang's fuselage has a vaguely Citation look to it, but closer examination reveals that
it is distinctly its own design. The cabin windows are high on the curve and oriented horizontally,
rather than vertically, giving passengers a wide field of view without having to contort
themselves to peer outside. The fuselage is round on the top half but flattens at the floor section
to increase foot room. It has clearly been designed to be maintenance-friendly,
and there is no system in the airplane that’s buried under another system or component.
One of Cessna’s greatest design achievements is the Mustang's main cabin door on the
forward left section, with an emergency exit installed in the middle of the fuselage.
A single flush handle opens and closes it with almost no friction on the mechanism. The door
is bigger than on other members of the Citation 500 family and operates more smoothly. Moreover,
it is more attractive than some other Citations because of the shape of its windshield and nose.
The gracefully curved windshield is electrically heated so the ductwork that gets the hot anti-ice
air to the windshield of many other Citation models is gone. The Mustang windshield slopes
back into the canopy, while earlier Citation designs have a much more upright windshield.
The Mustang features a new high-lift airfoil wing design, which enables low stall speeds
as well as the low drag and pitching moments required for a high-speed cruise.
The leading edges of its wings are swept at 11 degrees, protected by pneumatic de-ice boots.
The aircraft is fitted with electrically-actuated speed brakes and three-position flaps.
The greatest overall impression is of smoothness. The nose flows into the windshield,
which sweeps into the canopy. The wing-to-fuselage fairing beautifully hides the fact that the entire
fuselage is sitting on top of the wing. And the metalwork is free of ripples and waves.
The Mustang is one of the world’s smallest jets; however, it possesses a large cabin for its
category and offers the highest quality materials and first-class comforts. The cabin design
feels luxurious, traditionally featuring four leather seats ergonomically designed in a club
arrangement with an AC power supply, storage space consoles, retractable work tables,
and comfortable armrests. The table can be used after take-off and must be stowed before landing.
This pleasant and voluminous cabin can carry up to five passengers. Soundproofing is excellent,
offering a nice and quiet ride that exceeds most competitors. Cessna’s cabin design
team did a stupendous job with the window placement, giving great visibility outside
without effort from the passengers. Visibility from the cockpit is also as great as it gets.
A toilet is fitted as a standard option, though its facilities are rather limited
compared to most competitors, and some owners regard it as an ’emergency’ option. One thing
Citations do better than most business jets is hold baggage, and the Mustang is no exception.
Baggage facilities are good for its class, with a comfortable 57 cu. ft. available in the aft hold,
plus a compartment in the nose that runs across the fuselage’s width. Moving to the cockpit,
there are very sophisticated onboard controls, which facilitate piloting and allow a quieter
and smoother flight. Entry to the front seats is easier than other business jets as the console
between the seats doesn’t extend so far aft as to require a gymnastic exercise to get past.
Once in place, the controls fall easily to hand, with switches laid out sensibly. The
panel is clean which makes the piloting experience straightforward and intuitive, and is dominated by
the 10- and 15-inch displays that make up the Mustang’s version of the G1000 avionics suite.
The yokes project from the panel, which is better than rising on columns from the floor,
although they still block the view of some anti-ice switches.
The jet is powered by a pair of rear-mounted Pratt & Whitney PW615F full FADEC turbofan engines,
providing 1460 pounds of thrust each, which gets you high above the clouds and weather up to 40,000
feet. One of the advantages of FADEC is so much reduced residual engine thrust that neither thrust
reversers nor attenuators are needed for landing, saving substantial weight. But it also means that
the jet doesn’t roll away from the parking spot without pushing up the power a little.
The Cessna Mustang’s avionics are based on Garmin’s bestseller G1000 suite,
which drastically reduces pilot workload and allows for single-crew operations with
much more ease than in previous Citation jets due to its high levels of automation.
The flight deck is outfitted with one multifunctional display and two primary flight
displays, one on each side. Data entry is done using a keypad installed beneath the throttles,
skipping the endless knob-turning users of other suites have had to suffer.
Next to this are the elevator and aileron trim controls. Atop the panel are the GFC700
autopilot controls, mounted next to backup steam gauges for the airspeed, altitude, and HSI.
Mustang systems are even less complicated than other basic Citation models. The landing
gear and brakes of the jet are operated by an electrically powered dedicated hydraulics pack.
In case of failure, the gear can be released and deployed by gravity,
with a compressed nitrogen bottle locking it in position and providing emergency brake pressure.
Electrical buses are parallel and fully isolated from each other, with a backup battery providing
power to avionics and essential systems for a minimum of 30 minutes in case of power loss. The
maximum pressurization differential is 8.6 PSI through an automated system that requires only
setting the altitude of the destination airport before takeoff. The normal differential is 8.5 PSI
and gives a cabin altitude of a little less than 8000 feet at the max operating altitude of FL410.
Moving to its performance, pilots are usually in awe of how pleasant
the aircraft is to hand-fly. The jet flies hands-off with trim,
and its harmonious controls strike the right balance between being light and smooth.
Pilots with experience in heavier Cessna aircraft like the 182 or the Caravan series will feel
right at home. Its maximum take-off weight is 8645 lbs., with an empty weight of 5600 lbs.,
giving it a useful load of 3130 lbs. The Cessna Citation Mustang can reach up to 420 knots,
though its usual cruise speed is 340 knots. This jet can fly up to 1167 nautical miles,
with 100 nautical-miles of alternate reserves, and has an initial thrust-to-weight ratio of 0.337.
The aircraft’s service ceiling is 41,000 feet, with a best rate of climb of 3010 feet per minute.
The take-off roll in standard atmospheric conditions for a fully-loaded Mustang is
3110 feet, with a landing run of 2380 feet at the maximum permissible landing weight.
Decision and rotation speeds are the same at 91 knots, while Vy is set at 170 knots.
For easier reference, these values are displayed to the pilot on the MFD
during take-off. The maximum allowable speed with flaps down is 135 knots.
When flying with the damper system engaged, the Citation Mustang is an exceptionally smooth ride
for passengers and pilots. Like most business jets and airliners, the autopilot system allows
the pilot to set a target altitude at which the Mustang will level out without additional input.
Stall performance is gentle and predictable, with a nose-high, idle power, full-aft stick stall
developing as a gentle nose drop with no vices or recovery procedures required other than releasing
stick pressure and leveling off. This performance is valid for both clean and dirty stalls,
with the airspeed difference being 85 knots and 72 knots. The leading edge’s vortex generators
give the pilot a gentle but noticeable buffeting before those speeds are reached, a polite warning
to release stick pressure and bring the throttles forwards. Controllability remains good all the way
until stall speeds. A unique feature of the Cessna Citation Mustang is that its landing
gear has no speed limit, which allows them to be used as additional aerodynamic brakes.
Due to its short production run, the Citation Mustang remained largely unchanged through the
years. Cessna has only made a single major change to the aircraft with its High Sierra edition,
which brought along improved cabin furnishing and enabled synthetic vision for the G1000 avionics,
making an already pilot-friendly jet even more intuitive. This upgrade is a factory
one for Mustangs built between 2010 and 2017, but it may also be retrofitted to older units.
Back in 2006, when it was first certified, the Cessna Citation Mustang sold for $3.35 million,
and this did not change much throughout its short production run, making it slightly cheaper than
most competitors in its range. Today, prices for the class fall into the same bracket,
between $1.3 and $2.7 million, depending on the aircraft’s age, state, and maintenance situation.
The 2013–2017 models range between $2.40 and $3.10 million.
Like most Cessna aircraft, the Mustang enjoys the company’s widespread global service network.
Moreover, the airplane significantly exceeds published cruise performance claims and has
enough useful load and range to be practical for the type of operators who will buy it.
The VLJ market has weathered the storm of the economic downturn better than most other size
categories, with the Citation Mustang taking the biggest share in the charter market.
Certified under Part 23, Cessna has built the Mustang with the same safety
standards as its larger aircraft, with safety and redundancy in mind.
The first of the very light jets to enter major production, the Mustang was intended to be the
harbinger of skies darkened by clouds of personal jets, yet it was perhaps a case of the aircraft
being ahead of its time. Moreover, the term "VLJ" had acquired such a negative panache
that manufacturers were running away from it, branding their coming aircraft as personal jets
or entry-level jets, and so was the case with the Mustang. The Mustangs have experienced a number
of flight control malfunctions and failures serious enough to warrant reports to the FAA.
Apart from that, the slow speeds of most of these jets had Air Traffic Control keeping them flying
at 25,000 feet, where fuel consumption is a lot higher, increasing operating costs.
The Cessna M2 had cut deeply into sales of the Mustang since its introduction in 2013,
which went from selling around 40 units a year to selling only 24 units in three years combined.
The M2 is also certified for single-pilot operations, but performs significantly better,
is faster and larger than the Mustang, while operating out of nearly the same-sized runways.
The M2 can also be flown with the much more common C/E 525 type rating,
which covers the Cessna jets all the way up to the 10-passenger CJ4+. The Citation M2 is an
attractive alternative for Mustang fans, as the M2 has the same benefits as a Very Light Jet in
a newer, more spacious contemporary package with an exceptional combination of speed,
range, and payload, making it perfect for corporate, charter or private use. The relative
success of the M2 in a low demand segment of the market had put the Mustang on the chopping block.
Given all the false starts and setbacks in the VLJ market,
the Mustang is a standout as Cessna delivered what it said it would do when it said it would. For a
person making a decision to buy an entry-level or VLJ, Cessna will have a player in the Mustang.
It is incredibly fast, incredibly affordable, and incredibly innovative.