Cessna delivered 20 business jets in the second quarter of 2013, down from 43 in the same three months of 2012. It also said the first deliveries of the M2, Citation Ten and new Citation Sovereign will be delayed by a few months.
In April, Cessna announced that it would cut production of lights jets and reduce the size of discounts. Because of this the manufacturer said it sold less aircraft but did achieve higher prices. However, it is still selling at below list price and has unsold aircraft.
“I don't want to mislead anybody,” says Scott Donnelly, chairman and CEO of Textron. “We got better pricing in the quarter both sequentially and year-over-year, but we're hardly taking aircraft back to list pricing. These are still attractive prices for customers versus historical levels, so there is still discounting going on. It's not like this has snapped back to all of a sudden, people are going to be selling at list price.”
Cessna said that due to minor delays with avionics certification it now expects the first M2 and Sovereign deliveries to happen in the last quarter of the year, with the first deliveries of the Citation Ten due early next year.
