Cessna 402B Businessliner

This page describes the Cessna 402B, S/N 402B0501 and On — the airplane both saved handbooks cover, and 884 of the 1,384 eligible 402B serials. The Model 402 and 402A share the page and appear in the Variants table with their own figures.

The 402 is the high-density half of a pair. Cessna launched the 401 and 402 together in 1966 on one airframe: the 401 as a six-to-eight-seat corporate transport, the 402 as a nine- or ten-place commuter and freighter. The certificate makes the difference formal — Section II certifies the 401 for a maximum of eight seats and Section III certifies the 402 for ten — which is why they are now separate pages. The 401 is at Cessna 401B.

The pre-C 402 is the airplane that built the type's commuter reputation, and it is a genuinely different machine from the 402C that replaced it in 1979. It has tip tanks holding 100 usable gallons against the 402C's 206, electric landing gear rather than hydraulic, 300 hp a side rather than 325, a 6,300 lb gross weight rather than 6,850, and a wing four feet shorter. More than doubling the fuel is what forces the two onto separate pages under the catalogue's splitting rule, and it is the difference a buyer feels first: this airplane has under three hours of fuel aboard.

Unpressurized. Practical cruising altitude with passengers is 8,000 to 12,000 feet. For a pressurized cabin twin of the same era see Cessna 414 or Cessna 421B Golden Eagle.

Airspeed limits by serial block, from the certificate. Three blocks; the page stores the third.

The first block is a 52% majority of the whole section, which the runbook treats as thin, and restricting the count to 402Bs alone leaves no majority at all. The stored block is the lowest on Vne, Vno and Vmc, and it is the only one the FAA states in indicated airspeed — which is what these fields hold. If your airframe is below S/N 402B0501, its gear and full-flap limits are 139 knots, one below what this page shows. Everything else matches within a knot.

The certificate also splits baggage at S/N 402B0301 — 760 lb below it against the 1,340 lb stored — and adds a 6,335 lb ramp weight from S/N 402B1301 without changing the 6,300 lb takeoff weight.

Cruise, and a range figure that was fixed 2026-09-08. The stored 205 KTAS / 34 gph come from one row of the Owner's Manual range table: maximum recommended cruise, 75% power at 20,000 ft, on the standard 100 usable gallons. That table is labeled "No Reserve" on every row, and prints 601 nm for this row — the distance at which the tanks run dry, not a planning figure. range_nm had been storing that 601 directly, which scripts/audit-range.ts flagged: computing a range from this page's own sourced fuel, burn, speed and climb figures with the catalogue's standard reserve/taxi/climb allowances (docs/CATALOG-FIELD-SOURCES.md) lands at 448 nm, a 25% gap from what was stored. Both figures come off the same handbook row and neither is a mistranscription — the page had simply been storing the wrong quantity: a no-reserve, tanks-dry distance, where every sibling twin on this catalogue (see Cessna 414A and Cessna 421C) stores a reserve-inclusive planning range. range_nm is now 448, computed and shown in derived.range_nm; 601 nm no-reserve remains the number to know for a fuel-exhaustion conversation, and it is unchanged and still cited to the handbook here in prose. Either way, this airplane is honest about being a short-leg machine — which is exactly what a commuter operator wanted.

The same table at 10,000 ft gives 188 KTAS and 550 nm. The best-power maximum figures, quoted separately, are 198 kt at sea level and 227 kt at 16,000 ft; those are not cruise settings and are not stored.

Fuel burn is derived, not quoted. The Owner's Manual publishes fuel quantity and time but no GPH. 600 lb over 2.93 hours is 34.1 gph, and differencing the 1,218 lb and 600 lb rows at the same power and altitude gives 34.1 gph as well — two routes to the same answer on the document's own numbers. It is stored as 34 and deliberately left out of sourced:.

Single-engine performance, and this is the honest headline. 225 fpm at sea level and a single-engine service ceiling of 11,320 ft, both stated in the handbook. 225 fpm at gross on a standard day is real but slender: on a hot day at a high-elevation airport it is gone. This is the number that has killed 402s, and it is the number to hold in mind against any temptation to load past gross. Vmc is 82 KIAS and Vyse should be flown, not approximated.

Stall speeds are from the POH's Figure 5-8 at 6,300 lb, wings level, throttles idle: 73 KIAS full flap and gear down, 83 KIAS clean. Both are the KIAS column of a table that prints KIAS and KCAS side by side, so there is no unit ambiguity.

Runway. 1,695 ft of ground roll and 2,220 ft over a 50-ft obstacle at gross, sea level; landing 777 ft and 1,765 ft over 50 ft. Note the takeoff obstacle distance is 1.3× the roll and the landing obstacle distance is 2.3× the roll — the ratio the research protocol warns about, and a reason never to size a runway from a ground-roll figure.

Cargo Hauling (8/10): The Utililiner mission. 2,558 lb of useful load and 1,340 lb of certificated baggage across five stations, but only 100 gallons of fuel to trade against it — which in practice is fine, because this is a short-sector airplane. The 402C does the same job with double the fuel and is better at it. See Cargo Hauling.

Surveying (6/10): Workable, and the certificate certifies a nine-seat layout "with photographic provisions option". Endurance is the limit: under three hours on standard tanks. See missions/surveying.

Cross Country (4/10): 448 nm with reserves (601 nm if you plan to land with dry tanks, which you will not) is not a cross-country airplane. Auxiliary tanks help materially — the Owner's Manual lists 143, 166 and 207 gallon total options — but a standard-tank 402B is a two-and-a-half-hour airplane. See Cross-Country Flying.

Business Travel (4/10): A large, comfortable, loud, unpressurized cabin on short legs. See Business Travel.

Flight Training (2/10): Too large and too expensive. See Flight Training.

Backcountry (1/10): See Backcountry / Bush Flying.

Local Fun Flying (2/10): See Local Fun Flying.

Aerobatics (1/10): Normal category only. See missions/aerobatics.

See Maintenance Ecosystem.

Parts: fair. TSIO-520 parts are well supported; pre-C 402 airframe parts lean on the used market more than the 402C's do, because the commuter fleet that keeps 402C parts moving is a 402C fleet.

Mechanics: specialist. Turbocharged Continentals, electric gear rigging and the spar AD procedure are not general A&P work.

Engine reserve: $58,000 per engine at TBO, multiplied by two by the cost model. At the 1,400-hour TBO carried on this page that is roughly $41 per engine per hour and $83 per hour for the airplane, before removal and installation.

Recurring spend to expect: four magnetos, two turbochargers, exhaust system components, propeller overhauls, gear overhauls, and the spar inspection cycle if the strap modification has not been done.

See Aircraft Valuation Methodology.

The pre-C 402 sits well below the 402C and the gap is deserved: half the fuel, electric gear, less useful load, and the spar AD burden. Within the pre-C airplanes, the later 402B (S/N 402B0301 and up, with the 1,340 lb baggage arrangement and the modern seat layouts) is worth more than an early 402 or 402A.

Engines dominate. At $58,000 per side, a run-out pair is $116,000 of deferred cost before removal and installation — which on a $160,000 airplane is most of its value. Engine time is the first question, spar AD compliance is the second, and everything else is third.

Prices in the frontmatter are asking-price observations carried from the previous conflated page and are not sourced to a valuation guide.

Wing spar fatigue — the dominant pre-buy item on every pre-C 402. The lower wing spar cap AD campaign covers the 401, 401A, 401B, 402, 402A and 402B, and compliance is either a recurring eddy-current inspection programme or the terminating spar-strap modification. The strap kit is a four-figure-hours job and a five-figure bill, and an airframe without it carries an inspection obligation that never ends. Verify the specific AD numbers and the compliance method against the logs; a 402C spar record is not evidence for this airframe, because the 402C has a different wing and its own AD.

Electric landing gear. The pre-C 402 uses an electric gear system that the 402C replaced with hydraulics borrowed from the 421. Torque tube, bellcrank and fork bolt inspections, and main gear inner barrel bearing work, are recurring. Gear-related events dominate the type's damage history. An annual gear swing on jacks is the minimum.

Exhaust systems. Turbocharged Cessna twin exhaust has a poor history — leaking V-band joints and slip joints put exhaust gas where it does not belong. Pressure checks are recurring and the components are consumables.

Crankcase cracking on the TSIO-520-E and -EB. A known weakness on this particular engine dash, worse at high cycle counts. The heavy-case upgrade mitigates it. Budget for a case inspection at annual.

Turbochargers. Manage descents gradually and let the engines idle before shutdown.

See GA Insurance Underwriting.

A light commercial twin with a well-known gear history. Expect commercial multi-engine or ATP, four figures of total time, 250 hours multi and 25 in type for standard private coverage, with a substantial surcharge below that. Hull values here are low enough that liability is the larger part of the premium.