Right now, business aviation enthusiasts in Europe should be in raptures. The economy may be in decline, the pre-owned market may be quiet but one piece of enormously good news comes via Cessna in the form of the new Citation Mustang.

In fact, upon close inspection, the Citation Mustang could have been designed especially for the tightly compacted countries of Europe. While you can generally take what company spokespeople say with a heaped teaspoon of salt, a Cessna spokesman hit the nail on the head last month when he enthused: “With two turbofan engines, the Mustang will provide more speed, range and altitude capability than currently offered by any single or multi-engine piston or turboprop aircraft.”

How many piston twin and turboprop owners and operators would love to be jet-powered? And how many times have you heard companies threaten to produce just the aircraft for you and then founder on the rock of funding or bad decision-making.

What's more, at $2.3 million, it’s cheap by comparison to say the CJ1 and will open up the gateway to those with strict budgetary constraints. Belgium’s Flying Group has clearly been impressed with the aircraft, with two on order for arrival in 2007.

It will offer a cruise speed of 340 knots, 1,300nm range, maximum operating altitude of 41,000 feet, an interior large enough to accommodate two pilots and four passengers in club configuration, and room enough for external baggage capacity.

It would be fair to say that with its Mustang, Cessna is simply cashing in on territory where others have stumbled before. Anyone heard from the good people at Chichester-Miles recently? The company’s Leopard Six twinjet is an excellent concept, has sporty attraction and would be large enough to accommodate six people (pilot included).

But funding has long been a problem for the company and that situation doesn’t look likely to change in the near future. Farnborough Aircraft has had lots of problems with its F1 project, to the extent where a few months ago it replaced company founder Richard Noble with Geoffrey Galley, a 25 per cent shareholder in the original company.

Funding has been a permanent thorn in the company’s side since the single-engine turboprop was first mooted in 1999 and only time will tell whether that particular hurdle will ever be overcome.

If you cast your eye back to this section of the magazine in May’s EBAN, it is very interesting to note that Richard Noble wrote: “When you do an aviation project for real, you very quickly come up against the traditional put-down: Why hasn't Cessna done it? The response is straight forward: Pioneering achievement has absolutely nothing to do with size and money.”

This may be true of pioneering achievement but surely to be a real success, you have to be able to see it through. Cessna clearly has both size and money, and has played its cards quietly and shrewdly; allowing smaller companies do the market research and then taking the project on from there.

Ask the people at Eclipse. While orders have come in thick and fast for its popular six-seat twinjet, Vern Raeburn and co. must surely be worried that even for the extra money, potential customers will be tempted to change their allegiances to the folks at Wichita. Another example is VisionAire. VisionAire has long struggled for funding for its single-engine Vantage VA-10 and despite its relationship with IAI - which has conducted technical assessments of the aircraft - funding continues to hold back production of this aircraft, the first prototype of which flew way back in 1996.

So, for those of you after a

large manufacturer, plenty of operational support and a name synonymous with business aircraft history and success, look no further than Cessna and its Mustang.

Richard Evans, editor, richard.evans@ebanmagazine.com