In the first of a series of interviews with business aviation trailblazers, listen in as legendary Cessna Aircraft executive Russ Meyer Jr. reminisces about the challenges and achievements over his five decades in the industry. Now chairman emeritus at Cessna, Meyer also gives his predictions for the years ahead, 50 years on from joining the airframer in 1974.
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Transcript
Molly McMillin: Hello and welcome to today's BCA podcast called Reflections with Russ Meyer. 50 years with Cessna Aircraft. Russ Meyer is Chairman Emeritus and past Chairman and CEO of Cessna Aircraft now Textron Aviation. I thank you all for joining us today. I'm Molly McMillan, managing editor for Business Aviation at the Aviation Week Network. And I'm here in the office of Russ Meyer, who is celebrating his 50th anniversary of when he joined Cessna Aircraft back in 1974. And in 2025 it will be 50 years since he was named Chairman and CEO of Cessna. Welcome Russ.
Russ Meyer: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Molly McMillin: For a little background, Russ is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School. He served as an Air Force and Marine Corps fighter pilot. He practiced law for five years and then he served as CEO of Grumman American Aviation Corp. And then he joined Cessna back in 1974. He also was chairman of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association three different times. He's earned a long list of awards -- among them the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, the Collier Trophy Twice and election to the National Aviation Hall of Fame. First you got your start in general aviation with American Aviation, and can you tell us a little bit about that time and your entry into general aviation?
Russ Meyer: I can. I was practicing law at the time with a law firm in Cleveland called Arter and Haddon and a company called Bede Aviation, which became American Aviation, came to our law firm to do a modest amount of legal work. And since I had a background in aviation, I was assigned the work and got familiar with the group and the investors. And in 1966 I was named General Counsel and very shortly thereafter in May of 1966, they asked me to be president in the company and I said I was very happy practicing law. I had no great experience in running a company. And they said, "Well, why don't you just take a leave of absence from the law firm, get the airplane certified, and then we'll be able to sell the certificate and you can go back to the law firm."
And that sounded interesting to me because I loved aviation from the time I was young. And the law firm was supportive because the people of that company were all good clients for the company. Anyway, long story short, I became president of that company in May of 1966. The company had started to develop a single-engine two-place airplane that we was using metal-to-metal bonding, which was new to the industry at that point in time. As happens in many cases, they were not too well-financed, although they became very well-financed.
But the idea was a good idea. But the management team didn't seem to be doing very well. They were gone when I was brought on to be the president. So from 1966 to '68, we spent an enormous amount of effort earning the type certificate for the airplane, which we did. The company's name was changed to American Aviation and the AA-1 was certified by the FAA in September, certified in '67.
But instead of selling the ticket to somebody else, the investors and I certainly were supportive of it, decided they'd like to go in production, which is easier said than done as you well know in the industry. But we tooled up and went into production, began delivering the American Aviation, we called it the Yankee, early on in '68. In 1970, we stretched it to a four-place airplane we called the Traveler, which was really a nice airplane and things were going quite well.
I joined GAMA (General Aviation Manufacturers Association) at the time. They were founded in 1970. 1972 we delivered I think 700 airplanes, which for a startup company was pretty good. And during that time, Grumman Corporation, which long-time military aircraft produce – a great company started in the early thirties, was trying to get into the more actively in the commercial business as well as in the fighter business. They were developing the F-14 at that point in time, of course, had made along many, many airplanes during World War II and beyond that.
They sent their CEO out and he kind of liked what we were doing and suggested that we partner. They were building at the time the Gulfstream II, which had just been certified by the way, in 1968, right after we had gone into production. And they were still building the Gulfstream I. They also built a old propeller aircraft, they called it the AGCAT, which was agricultural back in the days when we were all building spray airplanes until the EPA came along. And then that was the end of that.
But anyway, long story short, the manner in which we did the partnership was very interesting. American Aviation was the succeeding company, and we made a deal with the Grumman in which they put in the Gulfstream program and the AGCAT program. We put in the American Aviation programs, and I continued as president and CEO. Our shareholders became shareholders of that company with an option to increase that share, which they did later on.
In the first year that we were partners, in 1973, I think I mentioned to you, we went from $7 million in '72 to almost $80 million in '73. Business was really good. We were so excited about it. And we had the facility in Savannah where Gulfstream still is, and we were manufacturing the single engine airplanes in Cleveland. So I was there until I had the opportunity to join Cessna, which is another story in 1974.
Molly McMillin: Why don't you talk about that? What attracted you to come to Wichita to join Cessna Aircraft?
Russ Meyer: I was so pleased with what I was doing at Gulfstream American is what we called the airplane. We were happy in Cleveland, we had five little kids, and I was planning to spend my career. It was just a great, great opportunity. And then I joined GAMA, as I mentioned, and one of the two or three founders of GAMA was a guy named Dwayne Wallace, who I could not have had more respect for. He was kind of Mr. General Aviation at the time. And I had a chance to work with him at GAMA, and we got pretty well acquainted. And he called me up in early 1974 and said, "I'd love to sit down and visit with you sometime when you're out here." And I had a trip planned out here (to Wichita), Anyway, in early 1974, he asked me to join Cessna as an executive vice president, and with the understanding that if everything went well, I would probably become his successor as chairman.
And wow, it was as tough a decision as I probably ever had in my life because the shareholders were great friends. Everybody at the company I had hired, we had a great team, but I had so much respect for Dwayne, so much respect for Cessna. I'd flown Cessnas a lot of times in between my military aviation days and had a long chat with Helen, (his wife) and decided this was sort of a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I came out here, my first day of work at Cessna was June 3, 1974. And as you mentioned earlier, I've been here now a little over 50 years, and it's been an opportunity and a blessing to both me and my family. It's been a great, great experience.
Molly McMillin: Over those years, you saw some real highs and some lows too. If you look back, what are you most proud of? What were your biggest accomplishments?
Russ Meyer: There are a number of, certainly I would talk about some of the aircraft that we've developed, but I think more importantly, although we had fuel restrictions in the early days, we had high interest rates and so forth. But product liability, the cost of product liability was just devastating the industry in the late seventies and early eighties. And it was so bad we were unable to forecast the cost because we were being sued. And literally almost every case there was an accident of any kind, and for whatever reason, for airplanes that were 40 and 50 years old. I think without question, the toughest decision I had ever made here was when we stopped production of all propeller aircraft in 1985, 1986. And amazingly, just eight years prior to that, we had delivered 18,000 airplanes in the industry. And we had delivered 9,600 of them. We had 53% of the industry.
We had delivered something like 65,000 airplanes during my, at that time, I'd only been here 12 years. And to think of shutting down the airplanes, the 152, 172, 182. Great, great airplanes that we'd built for years. But economically, we simply could not justify it because the cost -- we couldn't cover over the following years. So almost everybody in the industry stopped building propeller aircraft during that period of time. And we started our efforts at GAMA to modify the product liability laws, to enable us to have some limitation for that liability. And we filed our first proposal, I think in 1987. And of course the trial lawyers have a pretty strong lobby in our efforts during the first three years.
First several years didn't go very far, but in 1994, I had been selected to be chairman of GAMA for my third decade. And all of the pieces fell together, which we can chat about. But everything fell in place for us to pass the General Aviation Revitalization Act in August of 1994. And the benefits during the last 30 years of that legislation have been just almost incalculably positive. And you look at what we will be able to do for the next 30 years from the standpoint of flight training, building new airplanes, creating jobs, bringing aviation to every single part of the country. We can simply never estimate or overestimate the impact that GARA has had on this industry.
Molly McMillin: What were some of the highlights? You introduced the business jet to Cessna. And called it the Citation. Can you talk a little bit about why you decided to get into that area and how you came up with the name Citation?
Russ Meyer: I'd like to take full credit for that. But I can't, because when I came here, Cessna had launched an airplane called the Fanjet 500. Not a very romantic name, which is why we changed it to the Citation. And when I got out here, we changed the name. But anyway, we certified the original Citation in the latter part of 1972. It was, in my view, a brilliant decision because jet airplanes, at that point, and there were a few business jets, obviously the Gulf Stream II. Lockheed had the Jetstar. Lear had been building jets in the early 1960s. They had some jets in production. They were all powered by turbojet engines, so they were very, very noisy. They used a lot of fuel. They were great engines. They had a lot of power, but noise and fuel utilization were really critical.
They were also built primarily for high speed. And our thought at Cessna, we had built a wonderful line of twin-engine airplanes, the 310 on the 400 series and 421. So we were familiar with high altitude flying. We're also very familiar with airfoils and what you're trying to create with that airfoil. And our objectives were to create a very, very good handling business jet with a wonderful stall characteristic. The airfoil on the original Citation was very similar to that on the 421, had great stall characteristics, fairly decent, high speed, but not like some of the wings at the time.
But we were trying to build an airplane that would get in and out of short fields. Most of the early jets needed five, six, 7,000 feet of runway, especially when it was hot. And we wanted an airplane that was comfortable flying in and out of 3,500, 4,000 foot strips. There were hundreds and hundreds of new airports being built during that period of time, most of which were around 4,000 feet.
And we wanted the capability of operating comfortably and safely out of all of them. We were the first general aviation manufacturer to select a high bypass fan jet engine, which we worked with Pratt & Whitney on. And again, it didn't have quite the thrust levels at high altitude, but it was great at low altitude, very quiet, very fuel efficient. We were also the first company in the industry to deliver a fully completed standard airplane, if you can believe it, back in the sixties and the seventies before we built the Citation, we built an airplane without an interior and without avionics. And Chief Pilot would come in and say, "Well, I want Bendix, or I want Honeywell, or I want Collins."
And it would go to a completion center and sit there for 6, 8, 9 months while it was completed. And all of the airplanes were different. And so the service of those airplanes was a little bit challenging, but we said, we're going to select all of the avionics. It's going to be a standard package. We're going to select the basic interior. The customer will have the opportunity to change colors and fabrics and interior of the airplane, but they would get a standard avionics package. The first package maybe wasn't per peak, but it got better and better. But anyway, when they bought, the original price of the Citation, I think was $695,000.
And when it was delivered right out of the factory, it went right into service. It didn't have to go somewhere and be outfitted with avionics and an interior. It was a very, very, it did exactly what we had designed it to do. Some of our earlier customers, like John Deere, a longtime great customer, had facilities in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo and Janesville, and places where they had 4,500 foot strips. And of course, the Citation, every Citation, 1, 2, 5, Excel, et cetera, is so comfortable flying in and out of those short fields. It's very quiet. It's even quieter than the local traffic because back when Santa Monica was going to close the airport, the airplane we used to demonstrate how quiet business jets were, was the Citation. So we started out with a really, really good design, an excellent airplane.
And then for the next 50 years, we expanded the line by making it a little bit better, a little bit larger. As you know, we went out to Denver in 1976 and picked up all the journalists at five in the morning and announced the Citation 1, 2, and 3 at the same time. And without taking too much time, the Citation 2 was certified in 1978. And in 1981, we delivered 196 business jets, which nobody had ever even thought about. And of course, we deliver even more than that now. But '81 was a great year for us, the best year we'd ever had. We did a billion dollars for the first time, and everybody was just super happy and then came high interest rates, and as I said, product liability. And so Cessna evolved into a much different company through that period of time.
Molly McMillin: Right. There was a big economic downturn at that time as well, correct?
Russ Meyer: Our industry tended to be somewhat cyclical anyway because of the nature of the business over its history. But as I mentioned, in 1981, we had the best year ever. We had almost 13,000 employees, and five years later, we had less than 3,000 employees. We were doing less than half the revenue that we had done five years earlier. And we were really hanging on and trying to figure out how to best grow the company. And part of that decision was to stop building propeller aircraft and concentrate our resources on the business jets for the time being until we could somehow get legislation.
And in 1987, we announced the Citation V, which was a growth version of the 2, a little bit larger, a little bit more power, a little bit more range and all that. And the V was a phenomenally successful airplane. I'll never forget, we went down to NBAA at New Orleans, we rented a tent at the Botanical Gardens, we had the New Orleans Symphony playing that night, had a sit-down dinner for a lot of prospects. And when dinner was over, turned out the lights and rolled in a full-scale mock-up of the Citation V. And we left there with a briefcase full of orders. And the Citation V was so successful that that's really the airplane that was the foundation for all of the models that we built in the 1990s.
And as you know, we almost every year we go to NBAA with a new, when there was a CJ-I or the II or the XL or the Sovereign or the X or the VII, those were all designed and put into production in the 1990s. Those were great, great days, and not just the nineties. That extended obviously into this century as well. So we went from great times in '81 to really difficult times in the mid-eighties. They were really challenging times, but we had a terrific team and we were able to bring back a lot of the people that we had had to lay off during the middle eighties. And so happy to say that not only doing well then, but doing very well now too.
Molly McMillin: So you're a pilot with over 19,000 flight hours.
Russ Meyer: Yes.
Molly McMillin: So not to put you on the spot, but what is your favorite airplane?
Russ Meyer:Obviously the X was, the X was so much better in terms of its operating performance, high altitude and high speed, and a great handling airplane. I think I've got, I don't know, 2,500 hours on a X. I love it. Flew it a lot. But you look at others in the line, the CJ, the CJ-III, the XL are such really, really, and I love the airplanes I flew in the military. Most people don't remember the F-86, but it was kind of the last great day fighter. But favorite airplanes would clearly be the ones that we developed here that we continue to develop.
Molly McMillin: Looking back, what was the most fun part for you?
Russ Meyer: Oh, I think the most fun part from day one is working with a team of people that fully understand and are enthusiastic about what we're doing. They understand what we're trying to create. They understand that building a quality airplane is only part of it. Customer service is a huge, maybe even more important than the product itself. And we've had so many wonderful, wonderful teammates here. We have people that made their career, their cousins, their aunts, fathers, grandmothers, whatever. I mean, we have so many 40-year awards that we give away. And you build great companies by building a team of people that hang around and love what they're doing and try to make the company better and the products better. And I think that we've done a pretty good job of that at Cessna. Wouldn't change it for anything.
Molly McMillin: Looking into the future, what do you foresee? What will aviation look like say in 10 years?
Russ Meyer: Molly, I think it will look very much like it does today. I know there are all kinds of programs with electric airplanes and vertical airplanes and taxi cabs and non-pilot airplanes. There are a lot of resources that are going into a lot of programs that frankly, I think we're unlikely to see many of them. I think we'll do some things in the way of power, but we're certainly not, most of the airplanes for the next 10 years are going to be powered as they are today. We'll be more efficient. We use better fuels. Our footprint is way less than it was in terms of what we contribute to the environment, and it's going to continue to get better. But I think basically you'll see very modest amount of change in the next 10 years. In the next 20 or 25, maybe some of those programs will develop.
But we are not in a revolutionary industry. We're in an evolutionary industry. We like to build a product. When you certify an airplane, we maybe put 2,000 hours on it, and then the first year we have customers that are flying it every day and all of a sudden we have a hundred thousand hours. And that's when you really learn how good or how the product is, what you need to support well. And each of the Citations that we built, I'll say something that very few people would understand or would recognize. Of all of the models that we've built - and what are there, twenty-some Citations - we've built only three clean sheet of paper airplanes, the original Citation, the Citation III, and the Mustang.
Every other airplane had some part, either a stretch fuselage or a stretch wing, added power and so forth. But we learn so much about the airplane and then we evolve it. We make it gradually better so we don't come along and build all of a sudden an airplane that's totally different from anyone else. As a result of that, we have a very, very, very safe industry. We won the Collier Trophy in '87 for the perfect safety record worldwide and 1400 Citation. We're very proud of that. That's obviously our number one criterion, and that's what we'll continue to be criterion for everybody in the industry.
Molly McMillin: And last question, what advice do you have for young people? I guess it's a two-part question. Looking back 50 years ago, would you have taken the same steps getting into general aviation, business aviation? And two, what advice do you have for young people today?
Russ Meyer: Molly, I thought aviation was a great opportunity 50 years ago, and I think it's maybe even better today. From the whole high school, students can go to an aviation program and earn an A&P (aircraft and powerplant license), which is a great career. They can go to college and get an engineering degree. And so many things, whether they're in avionics or engines or aviation, there are just an enormous number of, and marketing and customer support. The range of opportunities, the relationships that you develop, which are so critical in our industry and in most of them, whether it's relationship with customers or prospects or vendors or teammates or whatever, it's an industry that you're always working with someone and developing a relationship in which you both have a deep interest and a common goal of making the product better or the service better, or the relationship better. And I love chatting with young people who are evaluating IT and AI and all that kind of stuff.
Transportation will always be a very, very high requirement. The decentralization of so many companies in this country over the last 30 or 40 years, the ability to travel, for example, from Wichita to Selma, Alabama in an hour and a half, as opposed to taking an airline that you have to go to Atlanta or you go to Dallas or whatever. And without being critical of the airlines, they have an enormous problem of moving a lot of people between places. And the more you can limit the number of connecting flights, you travel enough to be stranded in Chicago or wherever every now and then. And when you can fly somewhere. We can fly from Wichita to any location in the country, east or west in less than three hours. You can work a full day and even get home on some of those long trips.
So general aviation airplanes are still the most efficient way to travel. Costs are coming down. The fractional companies have brought more and more people into the industry. But quite frankly, if you have a need for a 100 or 150 (flight) hours a year, whether you do it alone or with a partner, you can do it very, very efficiently by owning an airplane and using one of these aviation management groups like we have here. Southwind does a great job. Solaris, I think, operates what, I don't know how many hundreds of airplanes they manage, but you can really do it efficiently. And I think that will continue to improve.
So, I think the market for our products and everybody in the industry, we have too few competitors, in my opinion. We used to have more. Competition makes everybody better. I think we'll see a little bit more competition down the road. Because if you had some of the resources that are being spent today on projects that maybe don't have that kind of future, you could build a heck of a company in a matter of a few years. So, I think we'll see a lot of excitement in the industry, and of course, the real beneficiary of the people who utilize the airplanes, and they're able to travel around so much more efficiently than any other way.
Molly McMillin: Great. Well, that's all the time we have. I so appreciate your joining us, Russ. I appreciate that. And thank you all for listening, and we'll catch you next time.
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