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Speed isn't everything. In 2003, British Airways ended Concorde supersonic passenger jet service when the operating economics simply became untenable and passengers tired of wedging themselves into comparatively tiny seats. Similarly, this week Textron Aviation announced that it was shuttering production of the world's fastest business jet, the US$23.365 million, Mach 0.935, eight-to-12-passenger Cessna Citation X+, after a manufacturing run of 22 years and 338 deliveries.

The original Citation X flew at altitudes up to 49,000 feet, retailed for US$12 million and was certified in June 1996 with the late golfer/pilot Arnold Palmer taking the first one off the line. The aircraft initially sold well; in its day, the Citation X was the darling of large corporate flight departments, including pre-bankrupt General Motors and fractional ownership company NetJets, which ordered 81, given its ability to shave an hour or more off transcontinental and transatlantic crossings. Citation X speed records include Seattle to Miami in just four hours, 52 minutes.

The currently upgraded X+ hit the market in 2014.

Despite its chief attribute, speed, the chief knock on the original Citation X was that its cabin was cramped and included a much-dreaded and outdated trenched center aisle and brick-like passenger seats. The seats marginally improved over time, but the aisle was a structural, immovable problem.

And unless you were long-hauling it, the speed advantage didn't really outweigh the additional operating costs. The legacy Citation Xs have an hourly operating cost—fuel and maintenance—of US$3,430; the X+ only slightly better at US$3,409, according to the aviation consulting firm Conklin and de Decker. Contrast this to its slightly slower stablemate that has a nearly identical cabin, the Citation Sovereign. Its hourly operating costs ring the register at just US$2,381.

The X+ features numerous avionics improvements and a 15-inch cabin stretch, but it sold poorly with only 24 deliveries to date, just four last year, prompting Textron to pull the plug and concentrate its efforts on a new crop of wider and more comfortable aircraft, including the Latitude and the soon-to-be-certified Longitude.

These new generation aircraft feature wider and taller cabins with flat floors—goodbye trenched center aisles—and are marginally slower, Mach 0.80 and Mach 0.84 respectively. A new, even larger Citation still on the drawing boards, the Hemisphere, is targeted to cruise at Mach 0.9. Compared to the X+, the new Longitude costs only around US$500,000 more with a cabin that is four inches taller and 11 inches wider, has really comfy seats and hourly operating costs estimated at US$2,551.