Cessna 441 Conquest II

This page's frontmatter describes the Cessna 441 as type certificated — two Garrett TPE331-8 turboprops at 635.5 shp each, a 9,850 lb maximum takeoff weight, and the airspeed limits and maximum operating altitudes of FAA type certificate A28CE. Most 441s flying today have been converted to TPE331-10 engines; that conversion has a section of its own below and a row in the Variants table, and the reason it is not in the frontmatter is spelled out there.

The 441 is Cessna's clean-sheet cabin-class turboprop twin and the senior Conquest, launched in 1977 — three years before the 425 Corsair that later took the name Conquest I. It is a genuinely fast airplane on a high-aspect-ratio wing with 475 usable gallons, certificated for up to eleven occupants, and it is the one turboprop twin that regularly crosses the United States non-stop.

AOPA tells the naming story better than we can:

Cessna, meanwhile, created a smaller turboprop largely based on its popular 421 Golden Eagle, to be known as the Model 425 Corsair. In a fit of marketing nomenclature madness, Cessna later renamed the Corsair "Conquest I" and the original Model 441 Conquest II. Got it?

Its introduction was bad. AOPA again:

Its inception was marred by tragedy when tail failures prompted the FAA to ground the fleet—twice. Cessna reengineered the entire tail, significantly beefing it up and retrofitting the fix to all existing airframes. Since then, the design has matured and is coveted for its speed, efficiency, and impressive range.

Plane & Pilot dates that work: an FAA airworthiness directive in 1979, after which "the company decided to provide all Conquest owners with a redesigned horizontal tail assembly and update all Conquests in the field to 1980 configuration."

This page was split out of a conflated cessna-425-441 page, which put two airplanes on two different type certificates under one set of specifications. It scored the 425 with this airplane's 475 gallons, 10,165 lb and 49 ft wing span, and it scored this airplane with the 425's PT6A-112 overhaul price of $370,000 per engine — an engine the 441 has never had. It also cited A25CE and A33CE — the Cessna 404/406 certificate and a hot-air-balloon certificate. Neither has ever covered a Conquest.

362 airframes are eligible on the certificate — "Serial Nos. Eligible 698 and 441-0001 through 441-0362" — and the type design is otherwise identical across all of them: 635.5 shp a side, 475 usable gallons, 11 seats maximum, 245 kt VMO, 0.55 MMO.

The cruise pair comes from one sentence of Plane & Pilot's profile, describing one flight in the airplane as delivered:

Cruising at 33,000 feet with six people and baggage on board, the Conquest has a range of 2,237 miles plus reserves at an average speed of 312 mph.

That strip and that sentence are imperial, so both are converted at 1 sm = 0.868976 nm: 312 mph is 271 KTAS and 2,237 statute miles is 1,944 nm. The units check out against a second source — the strip's maximum range of 2,524 sm is 2,193 nm, which lands within a few miles of AOPA's independently published 2,200 nm for the same airframe. Had the strip been nautical it would have overstated AOPA by 15%.

There is no fuel flow on this page and that is deliberate. See the validator_exempt note. The conflated page's 75 gph paired with no stated altitude and no stated engine.

Climb and single-engine performance, from the same profile:

Its Garrett AiResearch powerplants are each flat rated at 625-shp and yield a single-engine service ceiling of 21,380 feet and a single-engine climb rate of 715 fpm.

(625 is wrong — the certificate and AOPA both say 635; the single-engine figures stand.) Initial climb rate is 2,435 fpm. A 21,380 ft single-engine service ceiling is the number that separates this airplane from most light twins: it can lose an engine in the flight levels and still be above most terrain and most weather.

Ceiling — read the serial split before you file for FL350. A28CE gives 33,000 ft for S/N 441-0001 through -0172 and 35,000 ft from -0173, with NOTE 4 granting the early airframes 35,000 ft "when modified by SK441-36". Counting the certificate's own eligible serials, that is 172 airframes against 190 — a 47.5 / 52.5 split, which is too thin to carry a claim about "the model". The runbook's rule is to take the lower figure in that situation, so the page stores 33,000 ft and this paragraph tells a buyer to check the specific tail. Plane & Pilot says the 1980 fleet update took the ceiling to 35,000 ft across the board; the certificate does not agree that it reached every airframe, and the certificate is the document that governs.

Pressurization is the airplane's acknowledged weak point. AOPA:

Owners lament that the airplane is "underbuilt" with systems shortfalls including weak cabin pressurization. At its 6.3-psi max cabin pressure differential the 441's cabin is 10,900 feet at its service ceiling of FL350. As the airplanes age and minor leaks start to add up, that figure is optimistic at best. At the 441's lofty cruise altitudes where maximum efficiency is found, supplemental oxygen is a must, especially given the fact that the 441 can stay up high for six hours.

Runway numbers are incomplete. Both sources publish only the distance over a 50-ft obstacle — 2,465 ft for takeoff (Plane & Pilot and AOPA agree) and 1,875 ft for landing. Neither publishes a ground roll, and the conflated page had the landing-over-50-ft figure sitting in both ground-roll fields. Those fields are now blank rather than wrong.

The stall speeds on this page are legacy and unsourced. A28CE publishes none, and Plane & Pilot gives a single "Stall mph 86" — 75 knots — with no configuration stated, which cannot be split into a clean and a landing figure and which agrees with neither of the stored 88 and 79. Recorded rather than resolved.

Built on the certificate's 9,850 lb takeoff weight, 8,500 lb zero-fuel weight and 475 usable gallons (3,183 lb of Jet A), with the legacy 5,681 lb empty weight.

The zero-fuel weight is the real constraint on a full cabin, not the takeoff weight. 8,500 lb against a 5,681 lb empty weight leaves 2,819 lb for people and baggage no matter how little fuel is aboard, and the certificate allows 1,500 lb of that in the baggage compartments alone. That is a genuinely useful airplane: six adults and baggage still leaves close to full tanks and the book range.

Note that a 441 approved to 10,165 lb under the dash-ten conversion gains 315 lb of ramp capability over the certificated figures used here, which is one more passenger with full fuel.

• Business travel (10): The core mission. Cabin-class, pressurized, known-ice, single-pilot legal, up to eleven seats certificated and six or seven in a normal executive layout. This is the owner-flown business turboprop the 441 was designed to be.
• Cross-country (10): 1,944 nm at 271 knots with reserves, six aboard. AOPA: "With 475 gallons of usable fuel, the Conquest II can cross the continental United States and land with plenty of reserve. On light wind days, it can even do the westbound crossing." On 500 to 1,000 nm legs it competes with light jets, and on longer ones it beats those that have to stop.
• Cargo hauling (7): 4,169 lb of useful load and 1,500 lb of certificated baggage across five stations. Several are operated as Part 135 freight haulers.
• Surveying (6): Good cabin volume and a stable, efficient platform high up; the fuel burn penalizes long low loiter.
• Backcountry (2): Retractable gear, low wing, 2,465 ft over a 50-ft obstacle, turbine infrastructure. Wrong airplane.
• Flight training (1) and aerobatics (1): Not suitable.
• Local fun (2): Four-figure direct operating costs per hour.

Factory panels are early-1980s Collins, King and Sperry equipment — obsolete for ADS-B and for RVSM. Typical modern tiers:

• Entry: legacy panel, a Garmin GTN 750 or dual GTN 650s, GTX 345 ADS-B, original autopilot, no RVSM — which caps the airplane at FL280 on an IFR flight plan and throws away the ceiling it was bought for.
• Mid: Garmin G600 TXi, GTN 750Xi/650Xi, a modern digital autopilot where an STC exists, RVSM certified, modern weather radar.
• Top: dual TXi displays with synthetic vision, RVSM, fresh paint and interior, mid-time or converted engines.

RVSM is the decisive avionics question on this airplane and it is not one the 425 has, because the 425's ceiling is below the RVSM floor. Without RVSM approval a 441 cannot file above FL290 in domestic US airspace, which puts its best cruise altitudes out of reach.

• TPE331-10 conversion — the dominant modification, done at overhaul, and the reason most flying 441s are not the airplane on the certificate. See the section above. It is normally accompanied by a gross weight increase, and the approval for that lives on the individual airframe.
• Cessna SK441-36 — takes an S/N 441-0001 through -0172 airplane from 33,000 ft to 35,000 ft maximum operating altitude. On the certificate, in NOTE 4.
• RVSM certification package — required to file above FL290.
• Four-blade propellers — the certificate approves only three-blade Hartzell and McCauley propellers ("Note: Either two McCauley or two Hartzell Propellers are required"), so a four-blade installation is an aftermarket approval.
• Aux and extended fuel — the certificate's 475 usable gallons is the type design; anything beyond it is a modification to verify on the airplane.

• Parts availability: good. Textron still supports the type and a specialist shop network exists.
• A&P familiarity: specialist. The TPE331 needs trained turbine mechanics, and the fixed-shaft architecture is a different discipline from a PT6A.
• Engine reserve: $240,000 per engine from reference/engine-overhaul-pricing.md, which is a class estimate and not a quote — Honeywell does not publish a flat rate the way Pratt & Whitney Canada does, and that reference file says in terms that its TPE331 band is stale and probably understates today by 20–40%. An hourly reserve cannot be computed on this page, because the -8's TBO could not be sourced; see the exemption note.
• Hot section: $55,000 per engine, the TPE331 class figure. The interval is half TBO, which is likewise unknown here.
• Propeller overhaul: not modelled on this page.

See Maintenance Ecosystem and Engine Overhaul Pricing.

Prices on this page are legacy and unsourced. The one dated market figure obtained is AOPA's, from February 2019: "According to Vref, Conquest IIs range from $855,000 for a 1978 model to $1.255 million for a 1986 model." That is a seven-year-old band and is quoted here as history rather than as a current valuation.

The value drivers, in order:

1. Engines — dash number, time since overhaul, and whether the airplane is on an engine maintenance plan. AOPA notes TBO on the -10 is "extendable to 7,000 hours if enrolled in certain engine maintenance plans", which is a real difference in reserve.
2. RVSM — without it the airplane cannot use its own ceiling.
3. Panel generation and ADS-B compliance.
4. Records — tail modification, SID status, structural retirement lives against hours flown, and whether the ceiling and gross weight approvals a listing claims are actually on the airplane's paperwork.

See Aircraft Valuation Methodology.

The 1979 tail airworthiness directive is the defining event in this type's history and is the one piece of AD history both sources describe. Plane & Pilot: "Modification of the Conquest tail assemblies was necessary to comply with an airworthiness directive issued by the FAA in 1979. The company decided to provide all Conquest owners with a redesigned horizontal tail assembly and update all Conquests in the field to 1980 configuration." AOPA: the FAA grounded the fleet twice before Cessna reengineered the tail and retrofitted every airframe.

No FAA AD database check was run in this pass, and the wing spar AD and SID figures that the conflated page carried are NOT reproduced here, because nothing obtained in this pass verifies that they describe the 441 rather than another Cessna twin. That is an open item, and it is a large one for a buyer: the compliance status of the tail modification, of the Cessna Supplemental Inspection Documents program, and of every recurring AD is a records review, not a specification.

What the certificate itself makes mandatory, and which is easy to overlook:

NOTE 3. Service information: The airplane maintenance manual contains structural retirement lives, which may not be changed without FAA Engineering approval for the following components: Aileron Hinge Bracket 5824400-3 / -4 / -5 / -6 / -7 — 10,000 hours — Airplane S/N 441-0001 through 441-0362

A 10,000-hour retirement life on the aileron hinge brackets, fleet-wide. That is a replacement, not an inspection.

Other items a 441 pre-buy should cover: pressurization vessel and outflow valve condition (see AOPA on the "weak cabin pressurization"), engine trend monitoring on whichever dash number is fitted, corrosion in the wing on coastally kept airframes, and — because it changes what the airplane legally is — whether the airplane carries the dash-ten conversion, SK441-36, and an RVSM approval.

• Hull values of $800K–$1.9M drive premiums of roughly 0.5–0.9% of hull annually. The stored $8,000 is a legacy figure.
• Training: initial type-specific school (SimCom or FlightSafety) is effectively required, with annual recurrent typically mandated.
• Minimum experience: underwriters generally want four-figure total time, substantial multi-engine and turbine time, and a current instrument rating. Single-pilot approval usually needs meaningful turbine PIC time.
• The 441 is a bigger step than the 425 for a piston-twin pilot: it is heavier, faster, flies higher, and the TPE331 is a fixed-shaft engine with its own starting and power-management discipline that a PT6A does not have.

See GA Insurance Underwriting.