As I took my first walk down the line at the show, one aircraft immediately caught my eye: a sleek, low-wing single next to a Skyhawk and a Skylane at the Cessna tent. I stopped by right away and got to enjoy the first public showing of the Cessna 400 (formerly Columbia 400.)

I was greeted by a friendly sales rep who worked for Columbia and now works for Cessna. From talking to her, it sounds like Cessna is doing a pretty good job of taking care of the former Columbia employees. Cessna realizes that those employees are the ones who have the experience with the Columbia aircraft and is relying on them to help get their customer base excited about their new planes. She was sad to give up her demo aircraft though. She used to have a Columbia to fly around for demo flights, but now she is usually assigned a Skylane. She complained about how slow it is, saying she's used to taking trips at 200 kts in the Columbia...a speed no Skylane could ever even dreamed of.

I had never seen a Columbia 400 in person and I was very impressed as I checked this one out. The cockpit is roomy and comfortable, and large doors on both sides make entry easy. It has a side stick which is similar to, but not quite the same as the side yolk in a Cirrus. (Either is a significant improvement over a standard yolk, in my opinion.) The avionics are the comfortably familiar G-1000, making transition easier whether up from a Skylane or up to something bigger (a Citation Mustang, perhaps.)

Perhaps the most intelligent and worth-while design feature of the aircraft is a full alphaneumeric keyboard and selected G-1000 controls located on a pannel on the center arm rest. Thanks to that ingenius panel, gone are the days of big knob/little knob fumbling for five-letter fixes, radio frequencies and naming user waypoints. As a student of human factors, I am appaled that nobody else offers such a simple, yet useful interface for the G-1000. I sure hope Cessna realizes how great it is and starts putting them in their other aircraft!

On the outside, the airplane has gorgeous lines and simply looks fast. In fact, it looks out of place next to the "old fashioned" high-wing Cessnas. I've heard a lot of Columbia owners express a lot of love for their aircraft. Now that it has a new life with the backing of a strong company, I'd expect competition between the Cessna 400 and the Cirrus SR-22 to pick up.

If I remember correctly, the Columbia 400 sold for around $450,000. With Cessna's closest aircraft to the 400 (the Turbo Skylane at $398,500) cruising significantly slower with similar numbers otherwise, I almost wonder if the Cessna 350 and 400 will start to edge-out the C-182 in the near future as well. As long as the transition from something in the Skyhawk class to a C-350 or C-400 is as straightforward as I expect it would be, it seems like a person spending that much money would just put in a little extra for the added speed and better cockpit layout. I'm looking forward to tracking that.

As much fun as it was to look at airplanes parked on the line, the best part of the airshow was the flying. Read on for a description of the best act...

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