Is there a personal jet in Cessna's future?

Textron president and CEO Scott Donnelly last week set the stage for what could turn out to be a banner new product year for subsidiary Cessna.

While the company continues to steer clear of the super-midsize business jet sector, which it had attempted to gain access to with the now-cancelled Colombus jet, it apparently is not ignoring its core constituency.

During the company's fourth quarter earnings call last week, Donnelly noted that research and development spending at the company would increase next year, focused primarily on "core light to mid-size" aircraft.

"There are a number of programs," Donnelly said, including "block-point updates" and "new entries into the family of our products".

Hmmmm....

Donnelly's thoughts, combined with some information I attained through waterboarding (just kidding) tells me that Cessna is prepping to introduce a single-engine turboprop to compete with the Pilatus PC-12, currently a zone the company does not play in.

And better yet, it would make as much if not more sense to launch a single-engine jet to take on the very popular PiperJet, and, from what a little bird tells me, a Pilatus jet at some point not too distant.

Whatever Cessna is thinking, it will surely be cooler than the Cessna Corvalis image I mucked up with Microsoft paint for this blog. Though it does look pretty fast...