Cessna Aircraft Company celebrated the milestone at the Sun ’n Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida where a Grand Caravan with a special 25th anniversary paint scheme was on static display.
“The Caravan has been a tremendous success for Cessna,” Cessna’s vice president of Worldwide Propeller Aircraft Sales, John Doman, said. “Its order book has remained resilient for 25 years including during this most recent economic downturn.”
The Cessna Caravan comes in four models – the 675, the Amphibian, the Grand Caravan, and the Super Cargomaster. The Caravan is renowned for its versatility and can accommodate a range of missions, from airline service to cargo transport to business travel.
“The Caravan has also provided much needed humanitarian relief efforts throughout the world, including Indonesia, Africa and most recently Haiti,” Doman added. “The Caravan’s capability to bring supplies to stricken regions via unimproved or makeshift runways has made it the perfect aircraft for this type of mission.”
The Caravan is certified in 100 countries and the fleet has amassed more than 12.5 million flight hours. Cessna expects to deliver the 2000th Caravan, a Grand Caravan, later this year.
In other Cessna news, the company has announced it will accelerate customer deliveries of the long-awaited C162 Skycatcher LSA. Since delivering the first Skycatcher in late 2009 aircraft modifications have delayed initial deliveries, but Cessna says it is working with Chinese production partner Shenyang Aircraft Corp to ramp up deliveries for the rest of 2010.
Seeing as though the first Skycatchers were originally slated to arrive in Australia any day now but that that date may now be pushed back, this can only be good news.