Page 34 - Volume 20 No. 6

fan is merely a closely-shrouded fixed-pitch propeller, wrapping the shriek of the jet in cool bypass air, and it delivers vastly more fuel efficiency than a pure turbojet, particularly at the middle altitudes used on typical short business trips.
When I watched Milt Sills turn off at mid- field as he landed an early C-500 at our town’s 3,250-foot runway, I knew the game had been changed. Here was a quiet little airplane with no propellers, sitting at a small-town airport, ready to load up passengers for a hop to Chicago’s Meigs Field or New Orleans Lakefront airport. The smell of Jet-A was no longer reserved for the big cities.
The Oldest Citation
In late 1971, serial #3, N503CC, rolled out of the factory door, very likely one of the very first, if not the first, of the customer-delivery Citations. The airplane is still flying today, in great shape and a testimony to the correctness of the original market niche.
Since the early 2000’s, N503CC has been owned, in part or wholly, by Chuck Foster, chairman of Corporate Transit of America, an Arkansas-based courier and logistics company that services clients in 50 markets in 15 states, primarily in the middle and southeastern U.S. Foster understood the value of a corporate aircraft early in his business career; having a company plane allowed CTA to fly several clients to three or four cities, and still be home in time for dinner. Their first aircraft, purchased in 1981, was a Cessna 340 cabin-class twin, followed by a Beech King Air 90 that
was retrofitted with a Blackhawk engine upgrade. A Learjet 35 replaced the King Air, but Foster has found the C-500
to be the perfect plane for
the company’s purposes. It’s
not as fast as the Lear, but, as he says,
“for most trips, you just get up 30 minutes earlier; it does a great job.”
Foster gives high marks to Superior Aviation Arkansas, the management firm at Conway, Arkansas (KCXW) that operates N503CC for CTA. Pilot Chris Fisher, Director of Development for Superior Aviation, agrees with Chuck Foster’s analysis of the Citation as ideal for his trips, most of which average 500 miles in length. Chicago is an easy 1+15 trip time from the Conway base, and the airplane has taken longer trips to Miami and Phoenix.
32 • TWIN & TURBINE
JUNE 2016