Reports Say Citation X Production Has Ended
Various accounts in the mainstream and aviation media are announcing the end of the line for the worlds fastest business jet but Textron, the manufacturer of the Citation X+, hasnt publicly confirmed it to our knowledge.

Various accounts in the mainstream and aviation media are announcing the end of the line for the world's fastest business jet but Textron, the manufacturer of the Citation X+, hasn't publicly confirmed it to our knowledge. Aviation Week longtime contributor Fred George has written a series of stories lamenting the demise of the aircraft, which sports a Mach .92 maximum cruise speed thanks to advanced (for 1993) aerodynamics and a pair of beefy Rolls-Royce turbofans. "Even a garbage can lid will do [Mach] 0.92 with those engines," he quoted legendary race pilot and charter pioneer Clay Lacy as saying. The "Ten," as it was commonly known, won the Collier Trophy in its first year of service in 1996 and sold well as a transcontinental bizjet that would get its well-heeled passengers (Arnold Palmer was the first customer) from coast to coast an hour faster than its quickest competitor.
Gulfstream threatened to take the speed title from the Ten in the late 2000s but then-Cessna's CEO took it as a personal challenge to tweak the now-aging design into the X+. Over the last eight years, nothing has taken the speed title away but newer designs, including Textron's own Latitude, are almost as fast and have more comfortable cabins, muting the slight speed advantage. Although a lot of charters and fractionals still operate fleets of Tens, Textron only sold four in 2017, compared to 54 Latitudes.
