Cessna Aircraft Company

Cessna Aircraft Company, located in Wichita, Kansas, is a manufacturer of general aviation aircraft, from small two-seat, single-engine airplanes to business jets.

The company traces its history to June 1911, when Clyde Cessna, a farmer in Rago, Kansas, built a wood-and-fabric plane and became the first person to build and fly an aircraft between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Yet it was Clyde’s nephew, Dwane Wallace, who was the person most responsible for the company’s success.

In 1924, Cessna partnered with Lloyd C. Stearman and Walter H. Beech to form the Travel Air Manufacturing Co., Inc., a biplane-manufacturing firm, in Wichita. In 1927 he left Travel Air to form his own company, the Cessna Aircraft Company, to build monoplanes.

Cessna Aircraft Company closed its doors from 1932-1934 due to the state of the economy. In 1934 Dwane Wallace, with the help of his brother Dwight, took control of the company and began the process of building it into a global success.

After World War II, Cessna created the 170 - which, along with later models, notably the 172, became the most widely produced light aircraft in history. Cessna’s advertising brags that its aircraft have trained more pilots than those of any other company. Cessna was bought by General Dynamics Corporation in 1985, and stopped producing piston-engine airplanes the next year due to concerns over product liability. In 1992, Textron Inc. bought Cessna and soon resumed producing light aircraft.

See Also
Company web site: www.cessna.com
List of Cessna aircraft

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Uses material from the article Cessna.