Business Objectives Met With A Citation Jet Fleet

“Scotts Miracle-Gro is probably 60% of the dollars of lawn and garden consumable products. We think of ourselves as a pretty modern company. We use airplanes hard. We’re probably doing 6-700 hours a year per airplane. It’s a critical tool for us,” said Jim Hagedorn, CEO of Scotts Miracle-Gro.

The company’s Chief of Maintenance Ryan Durbin said, “Before you walk onto the ramp in our facility, we have a sign above the door that says, ‘Flexibility is the key to air power.’ We have to be ready on a moment’s notice to launch an airplane to go anywhere in the world.”

Chief Pilot Jeff Williams said, “It’s a very dynamic industry that we live in and executives that we fly around have to get several places in one day. The airplanes give us the flexibility to do that.”

“When I think of Citation, I think of dependability,” Durbin said. “Our primary mission is to get our executives from Point A to Point B safely and quickly as possible. The Citation gives us the ability to do that.”

Williams added, “What drew us to the Longitude is the cost versus the performance on the aircraft.”

Durbin said, “It is a phenomenal airplane. It’s very quiet. It’s very comfortable.”

“It goes faster. It climbs better,” Hagedorn said. “The Garmin avionics up front are fantastic and the build quality is really, really nice.

“We ended up going to your guys’ midsize Cessna Citation series as a result of bad customer service with another competitor of yours.”

Williams said, “We came back to Textron Aviation because of the support that we receive.”

Durbin said, “The Textron Aviation service network is very important to us. Anywhere we may have an issue, we know that we can get support to that aircraft in a very quick time. It’s great to have that kind of response time because our time is too valuable for our aircraft not to be operational.”

Hagedorn said, “For someone whose first flight in an airplane was in a Cessna product, to me it’s all about legacy and being able to stay as a leader and Cessna’s done that. Textron Aviation is a fabulously deep company when it comes to legacy in aviation.”