His Blood Runs Cessna Red and Blue

As a Cessnan for 39 years, Gary Cheatum has worked the assembly line, traveled and lived abroad as a field service representative, been an aircraft accident investigator, and is responsible for some of the original Citation 500 series engineering drawings.

His career at the Cessna Aircraft Company began in 1965 on the assembly line for the L-19 Bird Dog. This stalwart aircraft (the Cessna Model 305) was a fixture in the Korean and Viet Nam Wars, used for observation. When the military contract for that aircraft came to an end, Cheatum was sent to Arizona to pick up T37s that were being converted from their training configuration to A37 attack configuration via a military contract.

Cheatum quickly realized the benefit of obtaining an engineering degree and enrolled in the engineering program at Wichita State University. He was hired into the engineering department in the late 1960s and was part of the team of engineers that designed the first Citation 500. "Lear had the 23," he recalled. "At the time people were questioning who would want to build a jet that only goes 315 miles per hour. There were lots of jokes about that."

He worked on several different projects before being laid off in 1969 along with 30 percent of the engineering department. Six months later he was brought back, this time into the fatigue analysis department. "We had Cessna's first computer--a Wang card--punch machine. We tested bending tolerances, fatigue, and stress. We had to schedule our time on that one computer." As antiquated as it seems now, Cheatum said, "The computer cut out a lot of time and was so much more precise than doing the calculations by hand."

Late in 1970 he was sent to Viet Nam as a tech rep for the A37. A program was developed to upgrade the wing carry-through spar. Cheatum said his prior experience with the A37 and his reputation as a good mechanic got him that assignment. "It started out as a short-term assignment but turned into four and a half years," he said. "I left Viet Nam in 1975 on one of the last refugee flights out of the airbase."

Back in Wichita, he began conducting A37 deliveries for South American countries including Guatemala, Chile, and Peru. Much of the process involved working with the respective countries' regulatory agencies to obtain the necessary certifications.

His extensive foreign experience was just what Cessna was looking for when the Department of Defense and the Air Force purchased the A37. Cheatum was sent to Jordan to help maintain, operate, and train technicians. It was in Jordan that Cheatum met his wife, who was working as a flight attendant for Royal Jordanian Airlines. They have been married for more than 26 years. "I'm from Wichita, she's from California, and we had to go half way around the world to meet," he said. This temporary assignment lasted four years as well.

Cheatum's world travels weren't over yet. Cessna needed a field representative in Europe. Because he was intimately familiar with the introductory Citations, having worked on the drawings, he was the logical choice and was sent to Germany. During his temporary assignment, which lasted--you guessed it--four years, he was responsible for field service for all of Europe, Scandinavia, the Mid East, and Africa. "I came back to Wichita after that and worked in the field support department for a few years covering the Mid East, Africa, the Far East, and the Pacific Rim."

In 1987 Cheatum moved to the product safety department. That group provided technical expertise and accident investigators to the FAA and NTSB to serve as parties to aircraft accident investigations. Again his detailed technical and mechanical abilities were put to use in helping determine the cause of accidents and in making safety recommendations to the engineering department based on those findings.

In 1990 the head of the engineering department called Cheatum to let him know that he was being considered for yet another interesting position. As the business jet boom began in earnest, Cessna needed someone familiar with foreign regulatory agencies to improve the process of getting aircraft through certification. Cheatum was the natural choice. His role expanded to include dealing with FAA certification as well. If you see a Cessna that was certified during the 1990s you will most likely find Gary Cheatum's signature on the airworthiness certificate.

Currently, Cheatum is the quality program manager at Cessna and his responsibilities revolve around interfacing between the engineering and marketing side of Cessna, the FAA, and foreign regulatory agencies. "Quality is where the FAA and the company come together. For me, it's a continuous, everyday interface between the FAA and Cessna," said Cheatum.

-- By Joy Finnegan