Why The CESSNA TTX FAILED, Despite Being Too Good

This Cessna TTX is part of an honorable lineage of low-wing, high-performance single-engine aircraft that became iconic as Cessna moved into 21st-century plane design. The TTX is not a traditional metal single-engine high-wing Cessna like many of us are used to. What you are looking at is a composite low-wing high performance plane, primarily because it originated from Lancair. While the aircraft garnered plenty of attention when it was newly introduced as the Columbia 400, sales were not up to expectations as a result of fierce competition by the Cirrus SR22. Built to be faster, fly higher, last longer, and cost less, the Columbia 400 came out of the assembly line as a winner across the board. Despite the eventual acquisition and rebranding by Cessna, a series of circumstances external to the aircraft’s qualities prevented it from displacing the Cirrus SR22 and its turbocharged version, the SR22T, from the market. However, the TTX built a legacy as a reliable, fast, and pleasant aircraft to own and fly.

#Cessna #CessnaTTX #Cessna400
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[mr.ginnationfunlifestyle]

I think the TTX is for sure the better plane or the better Cirrus. The only reason Cessna failed, are heavy mistakes in sales and marketing and in the missing BRS Chute system, what customers wanted to have. Especially their wifes! 😅Cessna was sitting on their big aircraft company chair, thinking that their huge name and reputation will make the run. It obviously didn’t work out. So the winner is Cirrus. They had smarter strategies.

[CavemanGaming]

Cessna called it quits because it had to. They moved the plant down to Mexico and most of the planes failed inspection because of inflight wing delam of carbon fiber. They took a great aircraft and ruined it by having it built in Mexico by unskilled labor. There was a VERY SPECIFIC reason it was built in Bend, Oregon. Not because Lancair was here, but because the humidity is extremely low, something a carbon fiber aircraft needs when being built. Moving it to Mexico which we all warned was a very bad idea caused moisture to build in the lamination process which caused in flight failures of the wings delaming. It's also very obvious that the spokes person of this video has no clue what he is taking about. The plane DOES NOT need a chute because it's spin recovery is excellent, it takes a lot of screw ups to even make the plane spin out of control unlike the Cirrus which was REQUIRED to have a chute because of it's lack luster spin recovery. Finally the Airworthy certificate was pulled by the FAA because of the poor build quality that unskilled labor in Mexico did to it.

[air-headedaviator]

This is kinda wild, cause I see so many TTx’s and Columbia’s in my home airport, with only occasional SR22’s

[johnlonguil]

Cessna screwed up one of the best planes ever…Lancair should have kept the Columbia and worked with private equity if they needed money to grow the brand. Big companies like Textron are lethargic

[mervalbert]

I was taking delivery of my new Columbia 400 at the factory. While in class we heard this loud banging noise on the roof. Went walked out to see hail the size of baseballs. It literally damaged all the aircraft at the factory expect for the units being delivered that week, they had those parked in the delivery hanger. That is what bankrupted Columbia. They never recovered, got behind on R&D and by the time Cessna took over, Cirrus was to far ahead. That is why it failed. Great airplane, just back luck.

[billkrokoship]

Thank you for taking your time to make this video! The Cessna TTx is a truly wonderful aircraft. The screens are actually 14” and can be split into 4 for situational awareness far superior to others. I currently own a TTx prior to that a 2008 Columbia 400 and a 2003 Lancair 350 before that. There is not a better aircraft. Cross country is wonderful! Stable, smoothe and predictable while maintaining a great safety record over a Cirrus. Cessna was not the best at Marketing.

[scandihooiigan]

If Cessna wanted to win market share back from Cirrus and make the TTx successful, find a modern power plant that runs on Jet A like Diamond Aircraft and affix a chute system.

It’s sad because it is a great plane.

[royalgreenlantern]

I have never seen one of these as Cirrus is like taken over.But Cessna needs to bring this plane back

[doctormagee]

The lancair had a 12v electrical system. The Cessna fit and finish was better, than lancair and had a 24v system. The g1000 was excellent. I agree the Cirrus was a commercial success. Cessna should have added the BRS at least as an option. I had a 2004 and a 2008 thanks to the tax treatment. Excellent airplanes.

[TheRealCFF]

Ah yes, why did the Columbia 400/Cessna 400/Cessna 400 Corvalis TT/Cessna Corvalis TT/Cessna TTx lose out to the SR-22 series by Cirrus....

Short Answer: Cirrus developed a product more aligned to what GA buyers were looking for, therefore it sold more units.

Long Answer: The Columbia suffered from a combination of design not aligned with the GA market, hamstrung by bankruptcy and re-acquisition by Textron, plagued with manufacturing difficulties by Textron management ineptitude and a failure to commit to additional upkeep and innovation until it was just too late.

Scroll back to the late 1990s when Lancair developed a subsidiary called Lancair Columbia to manufacture a certificated derivative of their Lancair ES kitplane, which was used as an avionics testbed for NASA's Advanced General Aviation Technology Experiments (AGATE) program. Called the Lancair Columbia LC40-550FG and marketed under the name Lancair Columbia 300, this aircraft was updated with a fully FADEC controlled engine and became the Columbia 350 and turbocharged Columbia 400 . Cirrus approached the AGATE problem with a more modest and underpowered SR-20, flying with a 200 bhp Continental IO-360 engine. In 2001, Cirrus developed an upgraded version called the SR-22, which used the normally aspirated 310 bhp Continental IO-550, just as the Columbia 300 and 350 did. In 2006, a turbonormalized version of the SR-22 followed to better match the Columbia 400.

The rivalry between the Cirrus and Columbia designs boils down to them both being open ended answers to the same design problem, but some answers are better suited to the customer's needs and desires. Lance Neibauer of Lancair began his business designing kitplanes with a focus on speed whereas Dale and Alan Klapmeyer of Cirrus Design set out to build an everyperson's airplane. And while not purely focused on speed, the Cirrus SR series was plenty fast to satisfy the average GA buy but also developed an airplane that was easy to fly, with an additional focus on safety and continually made product updates and improvements to the design. The Cirrus has a little bit more spacious cabin than the Columbia and, with continuous updates and improvements to the airplane, the ballistic parachute (I will not sit on the fence; this is a superior safety feature and Columbia/Textron SHOULD have integrated into the TTx) and improvements to their avionics packages, along with a commitment to customer training to reduce accident rates made Cirrus outshine Columbia in the technologically advanced high performance airplane race.

Not all of the TTx failure to sell were related to this, however. Much of ended up being bad fortune combined with inept program management by Textron. In July 2006, the city of Bend, OR was hit by a freak and severe hailstorm, which damaged much of Columbia's inventory parked on the ramp outside the factory at the Bend airport. The property losses associated with this storm, combined with low sales over the preceding years finally caused Columbia Aircraft manufacturing to file for bankruptcy in January 2007. Salvation from financial ruin came to Columbia from a place over 1500 miles away - Wichita, Kansas. At the time Cessna aircraft was in development of a clean sheet, high performance, single engine airplane. Dubbed the NGP, or Next Generation Piston, the Cessna prototype looked more like the love child of a Cessna C210 Centurion and an SR-22. Cessna's parent company, Textron Aviation, quietly abandoned the NGP when it discovered that it could continue development of the plane for an additional $50 million, or it could acquire Columbia Aircraft - and its already certified Columbia 350 and 400 aircraft - for a mere $26 million. Cessna bought out Columbia in November 2007, saving the jobs of all existing Columbia employees - for now.

With its new acquisitions, Cessna quickly rebranded the Columbia 350 and 400 the Cessna 350 Corvalis and 400 Corvalis TT, taking advantage of Cessna's large network of sales and support staff in a bid to increase sales. Cessna also, unfortunately, in a bid to improve efficiency and reduce costs, decided to close the old Columbia manufacturing plant at Bend, OR. Instead it move final assembly out to Wichita, KS, with all composite manufacturing moving to Chihuahua, Mexico. This decision proved tragic for the Corvalis and Corvalis TT, as new composite wings being delivered from the Chihuahua plant were found to have delamination issues and an Emergency Airworthiness directive was issued for all LC41-550FGs made there. The problem was finally traced to a bad curing associated with the environment of Chihuahua and was fixed, but production had ceased in the intervening time, further reducing production examples and expanding the lead of Cessna's competitors.

In March 2011, Cessna announced that it was going to invest in a number of improvements to the 350 Corvalis and 400 Corvalis TT, rebranding the aircraft as the TTx (concurrently with this announcement, production of the Cessna 350 was quietly axed). While the TTx did make use of some improvements, most noticeably a proprietary version of the Garmin 2000 IFD, dubbed Garmin Intrinzic, it did not incorporate a lot of the changes customers were looking for such as a BRS parachute, a dedicated yaw damper, Flight Into Known Icing (FIKI) certification, and possibly even a larger, turbine powered variant of the Cessna 400. Attempts to improve the TTx followed, albeit slowly, with better exterior lighting, and FIKI certification, but the BRS and yaw damper were never among them. Citing poor sales, Textron finally terminated production of the TTx in 2018.

And it's a crying shame, too, as the Lancair Columbia LC41-550FG, finally marketed under the name TTx, was an excellent, docile, maneuverable and safe airplane that was a joy to fly. It made use of a little more robust electrical system than did the Cirrus and considerably more responsive with the pushrod flight controls moved by a dedicated sidestick. Had bad fortune and poor company management not consumed it, the TTx might still be flying today in one form or another.

[GA-inmw]

Formerly called "300 and 350 Corvallis", was successfully built in Oregon since 1998, but, Cessna decided to improve it only to be killed by two major mistakes, First mistake was cutting the labor cost by moving the composite shop to Mexico which this resulted in bad production quality and then FAA fined them $2.4 million, and the second mistake was by having a tiny useful load compared to the huge power plant on the airplane
Cessna's decision making is the one to be blamed.
However, Cessna 172 accident rate is 0.45 per 100, 000 flight hours while Cirrus is way worse which was 1.6 per 100, 000 flight hours, then fell to 1.01 per 100, 000 flight hours after improving it's safety. (Wikipedia).

[bernardanderson]

The cost of owning one is more expensive to operate and since Cessna is bringing back the Turbo T 182 they should bring back the TTX

[bernardanderson]

The TTX market is still going strong and the prices are more expensive than before but the Cirrus aircraft is still ahead of the light weight deposit built performance

[Fieldmorey]

Most of the video shots of the interior are the Columbia not the TTx

[lwalters]

Diamond Aircraft makes the best GA composite planes.

[tetttettamilli]

@Dwayne - So how'd the RV10 compare to both in a SXS comparison? Also, with the turbo Cirrus, is it now a "better" aircraft than the TTX?

[kazansky]

The reason the ttx failed and the sr series are doing well is because the people with the money to buy these things aren't "pilots", they're rich people, and rich people like the parachute.

[kowkunt]

Hmm
I wonder how the C 440, Sr 22 or the RV 10 or Piper Malibu would handle the Diesel Red A05 engine?.
It would equate to aprox. 350 h.p. in a gas and burn a lot less fuel.
It would have an overhaul life twice that of the Gas engine.
😢

[Badgerbiker]

The Cirrus is a much better design, from a maintenance standpoint. I’ve done Annual inspections on both and the Cirrus has a much cleaner design to disassemble for inspection and definitely easier to visually see what you need to inspect. From a pilots standpoint, the Cirrus feels more stable during takeoff and landing with the Cirrus have a wider landing gear stance. The Cessna just seemed heavy, over engineered, cramped cockpit, and just not as refined as the Cirrus. And from a mechanic standpoint, Cirrus has way better tech support!!

[willthompson]

Could you please do one on the Rockwell Commander.