Cessna Citation Longitude Charter

Cessna certified the Citation Longitude in 2019 as the flagship of the Citation line — the biggest, longest-legged Citation ever built and the aircraft Textron chose to signal that Wichita could still play in the super-midsize category alongside Bombardier and Embraer. The Longitude is a clean-sheet design that shares its wing, engines and fly-by-wire flight controls with the Latitude and Hemisphere programmes, but stretches the fuselage to 73 feet 2 inches and adds nearly a thousand nautical miles of range.

The programme took longer than Cessna hoped. First flight came in 2016; entry into service slipped to late 2019 after FAA certification hurdles around the fly-by-wire spoilers. Once in service the aircraft settled quickly. NetJets became the launch fractional operator with a firm order for 150 units — the single largest business-jet order in the company's history — and the Longitude has since become one of the most common super-midsize offerings on the North American charter market.

For charter clients the Longitude is the Citation family's answer to a specific question: what if you liked the Latitude's cabin but wanted transcontinental range and a flat floor throughout? The answer is an aircraft that flies coast-to-coast US, London to Dubai or New York to Los Angeles nonstop, with eight passengers, a stand-up cabin and Cessna-Textron support behind it.

The Longitude's cabin is the largest ever built into a Citation — 25 feet 2 inches from forward divider to aft bulkhead, six feet flat wide and just over six feet tall, with a completely flat floor. Standard layout is a double-club eight seat configuration with an aft three-place divan, but most Longitudes are delivered as a nine-seat double-club plus belted lavatory. Seat pitch in the club groupings is generous, and the seats themselves fully recline, track, swivel and berth into two full lie-flat beds across the aisle.

Cessna borrowed the Latitude's approach to cabin design and refined it: single-piece pull-down window shades, LED wash lighting programmed to circadian schedules, Bluetooth-linked cabin management from a passenger's own phone or the standard Clairity XT high-definition displays, and Ka-band Wi-Fi as standard from delivery. Sound insulation is a genuine strong point — the cabin at cruise measures around 68 dB, comparable to the Challenger 3500 and quieter than the Praetor 600.

The galley is forward-left of the main door, with hot and cold food storage, an espresso machine on most operators, and space for a full pre-departure catering setup. Aft, the fully enclosed lavatory has a solid door, vanity, natural light through a dedicated window and a belted seat that FAA counts as a certified passenger position. Baggage volume is 112 cubic feet in an externally accessed heated hold — competitive with the Challenger 350 and larger than the Praetor 600.

Twin Honeywell HTF7700L turbofans deliver 7,665 pounds of thrust each, giving the Longitude a maximum cruise speed of Mach 0.86 and a long-range cruise of Mach 0.80. Certified ceiling is FL450. NBAA IFR range with four passengers is 3,500 nautical miles — enough for New York to London (with reserves), Los Angeles to Honolulu, London to Dubai, or Dubai to Tokyo with a fuel stop. Real-world eight-passenger range is closer to 3,200 nm, still comfortably transcontinental in either the US or Europe.

Balanced field length at maximum take-off weight is 4,810 feet — longer than a Challenger 350 but usable at virtually every business airport that matters. Landing distance is 3,400 feet, opening up Aspen (subject to weight and temperature restrictions), Sun Valley, Telluride, Innsbruck and Chambéry. The Longitude is not a short-runway specialist like the Praetor 600, but its field performance is good enough that few real-world missions are ruled out on runway grounds alone.

Fuel burn averages 250 US gallons per hour in the first hour and settles around 220 gph in cruise. That puts trip fuel cost meaningfully below the Challenger 350 and Praetor 600 over comparable missions, and is one of the Longitude's central commercial arguments — Cessna sold the aircraft on lifetime operating cost, and the numbers have largely held up in service.

The Longitude is at its best on 3,000-to-3,500 nm point-to-point missions carrying six to eight passengers. Coast-to-coast US in either direction, London to Dubai, Dubai to Cape Town, London to New York (westbound in favourable winds), New York to São Paulo — these are the missions the aircraft was engineered for and where its combination of speed, cabin size and fuel burn most obviously beats the competition.

It also does well as a corporate shuttle for larger executive parties inside a single continent. Boeing, GE, Amazon and several Fortune 100 flight departments have adopted the Longitude for east-coast-to-west-coast internal travel, using the flat-floor cabin as a genuine mobile office. NetJets flies theirs primarily on US transcontinental and Caribbean routes, where the range gives dispatchers material flexibility on tech-stop planning.

Where the Longitude is less obviously the right tool is on short segments — anything under 90 minutes — where you pay for range and cabin volume you cannot use. On sub-500 nm missions a Latitude or Praetor 500 does the same job with lower trip cost. The Longitude earns its keep once the mission stretches beyond three hours.

Charter hourly rates for the Longitude in North America typically fall between $8,200 and $9,800 all-in; in Europe between €8,500 and €10,500. Indicative one-way pricing: New York to Los Angeles from $46,000; London to Dubai from £58,000; Miami to São Paulo from $62,000; Geneva to Dubai from €55,000. Empty-leg pricing is more common on the Longitude than on the Praetor 600 because NetJets and Flexjet fleet volumes generate reposition inventory.

Against the Challenger 350 (its most direct rival), the Longitude wins on range (3,500 vs 3,200 nm), fuel burn and cabin flexibility (double-club as standard); the Challenger wins on cabin width by roughly two inches, on top-speed cruise and on brand cachet in some markets. Against the Praetor 600, the Longitude gives up on cabin altitude (5,950 vs 5,800 ft) and on transatlantic range with headwinds, but wins on cabin length, baggage volume and Cessna-Textron service network reach. Against the Gulfstream G280, the Longitude offers a wider cabin at similar range but a less prestige-forward brand.

The verdict for most charter clients is that the Longitude is the rational super-midsize choice on price, cabin size and operating economics. Whether it wins the emotional argument against a Challenger or Praetor depends on the client — but on paper it is the strongest all-round proposition in the current super-midsize market.

Charter the Longitude when you have six to eight passengers, a transcontinental itinerary, and want a modern flat-floor cabin with genuine 3,500 nm range at what remains the most competitive hourly rate in its class. It is also the right aircraft for corporate flight departments that value Cessna-Textron service network reach and NetJets fractional availability, both of which are meaningfully broader than for European-badged rivals.

Step up to a Falcon 2000LXS or Legacy 500 when you need short-field access to genuinely constrained airports; step across to a Challenger 350 when brand or resale value matters more than absolute operating cost; step down to a Citation Latitude when the mission is genuinely short. For a very large slice of super-midsize missions, however, the Longitude is now the aircraft to beat.