The best-selling midsize Citation Excel is still available for purchase in factory-new form, having morphed from the original 560XL in various iterations and now called the Ascend. But not surprisingly, a team of former Cessna Citation executives have taken on a small corner of the used market for the Excel and created a refurbished version—the Citation Excel Eagle—filling a market niche for buyers who like the airplane but don’t want to spend $17 million on the newest version. 

While the Excel Eagle is new in terms of avionics, interior, paint, and some other features, it does start with a preowned airframe and the existing engines, but the mod package extends the life of the Excel well into the coming decades.

Business jets, after all, fly very little in corporate, non-fleet service. Even some high-time airframes that came from fleet operators have logged relatively few hours compared with airplanes flown by airlines. In other words, there is a lot of life left in Excels of all types. 

A notable difference between the Ascend and the rest of the Excel fleet is that the new model has a flat floor, which actually lowers the cabin interior height. So a taller occupant might find a refurbished Excel with its trenched floor more accommodating, further lending to the appeal of programs like the CitationPartners Excel Eagle. There is another key difference between the Ascend and earlier models and that is the Ascend’s autothrottle system. Presumably, Garmin could at some point certify autothrottles for G5000-upgraded Excels, but that hasn’t happened yet. 

The Eagle program was launched by Russ Meyer, his son Russ Meyer III, Gary Hay, and Joe Hepburn. The senior Meyer was Cessna chairman for 32 years (now chairman emeritus) and is chairman of CitationPartners. Russ Meyer III, president of CitationPartners, managed the Citation CJ3 and Mustang programs. Hay’s roles at Cessna included worldwide marketing, sales, and customer support, and he succeeded Meyer as CEO in 2000. Hepburn also held a significant role during the CJ3 program and led product support and the piston business unit.

“We were all involved in the Excel development,” Hay said, explaining that the founding team’s experience and the suppliers they organized for the project led to the name CitationPartners. 

Textron Aviation is well aware of the Eagle program, Hepburn explained. In fact, CitationPartners even uses the old Cessna three-pennant logo from the company’s piston past. “There’s been very little pushback,” he said. And, Textron Aviation benefits from Excel Eagle owners who participate in the ProParts hourly parts cost program, not to mention making service centers available to work on Eagles. “If you need factory support, you can get it. There’s goodness for both [of us].”

Doing the Work

The CitationPartners team doesn’t do the work on the aircraft, although Hepburn puts his maintenance background to work when researching a customer’s airplane to make sure it qualifies for the Eagle treatment. At the same time, he can evaluate the inspection status to make sure any near-term work is done at the same time so the customer doesn’t have to bring the airplane in for an inspection or maintenance event soon after delivery.

“We can deliver it free of any major inspections for a year,” said Hepburn. Some inspections can be deferred, for an additional fee, but in general, it’s much less expensive to do the work while the airplane is down for the Eagle upgrade.

CitationPartners has contracted with Yingling Aviation at Wichita’s Eisenhower National Airport to do the Eagle upgrade. This includes the Garmin G5000 avionics package, a custom interior, maintenance, and inspections to enroll in ProParts (which comes with no enrollment fee or for existing ProParts customers, lower hourly rates), and complete strip and repaint. “Yingling has been a fabulous partner,” Hay said. 

Once inducted, CitationPartners hires local test pilots to fly the Excel and note any discrepancies. The company team members monitor all the work and once an airplane is done, the test pilots conduct final flight tests in preparation for delivery.

More than 1,100 Excels and XLSs are still flying and may qualify for the Eagle upgrade. CitationPartners and Yingling can handle up to two upgrades per month as Yingling’s technicians have become more efficient and have lowered the time for the Eagle conversion to four months from five. “We think [the uptake rate] will accelerate,” said Russ Meyer. “We know who owns every Excel.” 

Upgrade Options

The full Citation Eagle upgrade costs $1.55 million, and this includes avionics, interior, and paint as well as up to $25,000 worth of repairs, if needed. The Garmin G5000 avionics suite weighs about 200 pounds less than the Honeywell avionics that it replaces, and there is a “modest” useful load increase of about 50 pounds due to the need to install some ballast in the nose to maintain the original weight and balance configuration. Eagle owners can use FlightSafety’s G5000-equipped level-D Excel simulator at its Wichita, Kansas learning center for differences and recurrent training.

Buyers of the Eagle upgrade get a bonus, compared to having the G5000 avionics done by a Garmin dealer. CitationPartners includes the optional Garmin Awareness & Protection package, which adds synthetic vision, Surface Watch, underspeed protection, and Flightstream 510 wireless gateway. 

The avionics package comes with three multi-pane 14-inch displays, dual Garmin attitude and heading reference systems, two touchscreen controllers, integrated engine indicating and crew alerting system, GFC 700 autopilot with emergency descent mode, digital GWX 75 radar with advanced weather detection and avoidance technology, ADS-B Out and In, WAAS/LPV approaches, Mid-Continent Standby Attitude Module, and electronic charts. Available options are controller-pilot datalink communications (compatible with FAA Data Comm and EASA Link 2000+) and Garmin Iridium satcom for voice calling, messaging, and weather information.

Most original knobs and switches are retained, but the upgrade also adds an autopilot control panel under the forward edge of the glareshield—replacing the crew alerting system (CAS) annunciator panel—and two primary flight display controllers. The original pressurization system is unchanged and isn’t controlled by the new avionics. With the removal of the annunciator panel, CAS messages are now displayed on the center multifunction display.

Choosing the Interior

Customers have a few options for their Eagle interiors, including three outfitting levels: sport, classic, or custom. Every occupant gets a USB-A and -C outlet. The customer can select from a variety of optional add-ons such as an Airtext bulkhead display/moving map or Gogo Business Aviation’s Avance L3 or L5 air-to-ground connectivity system. 

Interior features include new veneer, carpeting, sidewalls, window shades, upgraded seats, and custom plating. 

Before the work starts, Citation Partners invites customers to visit Yingling Aviation to consult on the interior and paint design. 

When it first launched, CitationPartners planned to buy Excels and then do the upgrade and resell them. It did so with the first six Eagle Excels, which were purchased from Textron Aviation. But all Excel models are getting hard to find, with few coming on the market. The last three Eagles were individual owner airplanes.

“We would love to acquire them when they’re available at a realistic price,” said Meyer Senior. “We do see some softening in the market.”

“People hang onto them,” Hay said, and thus they are ideal potential customers to make their aircraft like new again.

“If we find a used aircraft that comes on the market, we might look at it,” said Meyer III. “There are not many coming on now, the market for the Excel is very strong.”

Another attraction of the Eagle program is the bump in value, which Vref Aircraft Value Reference has acknowledged. “It’s very much worth the transformation,” he said. “Vref bumps up the value by $1.9 million, so financially it’s a strong sell. It almost makes the Eagle pay for itself.”