The project was announced at the annual NBAA convention in October, 1994, and the prototype aircraft took off on its first flight on February 29, 1996. Federal Aviation Administration certification was granted in April 1998, by which time Cessna had over 200 orders for the aircraft. By the time the 100th Excel was delivered in August 2000, an aircraft was coming off the Wichita production line every three days. A total of 308 were built before production switched to the Citation XLS.