Iowa State University recently acquired a Cessna 560XL airplane for $5.06 million, university staff confirmed last week to Bleeding Heartland, a blog about Iowa politics.
As reported by Bleeding Heartland, the 2004 model Cessna arrived in Ames last month and is intended to replace the university’s King Air 350.
ISU communications staffer Angie Hunt said via email, “the Cessna plane was purchased for the athletic department’s primary use,” with the ISU Foundation using the athletic’s department’s “cash reserves” for the transaction. She added, “No general funds or tuition dollars were used.”
Athletic department staff members have already used the Cessna for several trips.
ISU did not announce the purchase or its plans to upgrade the university’s aircraft. Bleeding Heartland inquired about the Cessna after seeing the plane on the Federal Aviation Administration’s registry for Story County, under the name “Iowa State University of Science and Technology,” with a certificate dated Jan. 24, 2024.
According to the FlightAware website, the plane flew from Tobias Bolanos International airport in Costa Rica to Miami, Fla., and on to the Quad Cities airport in early November. It arrived at the Ames Municipal airport on Jan. 16, traveled to Salt Lake City and Las Vegas on Jan. 17, to the Dallas area on Jan. 18, and back to Des Moines later the same day.
During the last week of January, the Cessna recorded trips to Trenton, N.J., and Madison, Wis., as well as stops at the Waterloo and Fort Dodge regional airports.
The university’s procurement policy states that equipment costing more than $2 million “will be submitted” to the chief operating officer of the Iowa Board of Regents for approval, “and at the discretion of the COO may be submitted to the full Board for approval.”
Josh Lehman, communications director for the Board of Regents, confirmed via email that the board did not discuss the Cessna purchase at any of its meetings: “this was handled by the ISU foundation and doesn’t require board approval.”
Hunt told Laura Belin of Bleeding Heartland, “While this did not require Board of Regents approval, the university advised board leadership of plans to purchase the plane.”
The 2014 purchase of ISU’s King Air was handled the same way, with the ISU Foundation using “discretionary funds” designated for the athletic department, and no formal approval by the Iowa Board of Regents.
Why purchase a new plane? Hunt told Bleeding Heartland, “The King Air needed mechanical updates and with the expansion of the Big 12 conference increasing travel for athletics, it made financial sense to purchase the Cessna.”
Neither plane is large enough to carry a whole team to a competition; their capacity is eight to ten people. Hunt clarified that the King Air “averages around 300 hours of flight time annually and is used primarily by coaches for recruiting trips.”
The Federal Aviation Administration’s database currently shows both the King Air and the Cessna registered to ISU, according to Belin. Initially, Hunt said, “The King Air will be sold. Based on the appraised value and cost of mechanical updates for the King Air, the net cost for the Cessna will be approximately $750,000.”
In response to follow-up questions, she clarified, “The purchase price for the Cessna was $5.06 million. The King Air is appraised at $3.32 million. The cost of the required maintenance for the King Air, around $1 million, was invested in the purchase of the Cessna.”
