Some people told Sean Mickler he was crazy for investing the money and time needed to transform a 35-year-old Beechcraft King Air into the perfect transport for business and personal missions.
Now that he’s done it, yeah, he agrees he was nuts and admits he probably wouldn’t have done it knowing what he knows now. When he located the airplane in 2023, it wasn’t quite a barn find but it’s safe to say the airplane hadn’t received the care it should have.
“If you would have told me three years ago that we would be buying the third production King Air 350 and making her like new from where she sat, I never would have believed it,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Mickler is thrilled to be flying a 1989 King Air 350, serial number FL-3, customized to his preferences and needs for less than the cost of acquiring a factory-new King Air.
“We didn’t expect to own a 350, and now we can’t imagine living without it,” he said. “Our story became a bit of a love story: An old girl with not so many hours, living in a T-hangar at a rural Texas airport. She just needed the opportunity to show the world that being an early serial number doesn’t mean she can’t compete with the rest of ’em.”
Construction + Aviation
Mickler is CEO of Jacob White Construction, a commercial development and contracting business based out of Houston, Texas. His partner in the aircraft owns and operates a national steel fabricating and erection business. Both work with clients across the U.S.
Mickler has a degree in aviation business from Purdue University and has been flying for more than 20 years. He said his grandfather owned more than 27 airplanes over his lifetime, including a Queen Air, and his father is also a pilot, having used aircraft when he started a small construction business in 1980 that grew into JWC.
With airline transport pilot and flight instructor certificates, Mickler is type-rated in the B300, CE-500 (Cessna Citation 500 series) and EMB-505 (Embraer EMB-505 Phenom 300). Prior to the 350, he owned and flew a Citation Super S-II, Piper Cheyenne, Beechcraft Baron B58, Piper Aerostar and Beechcraft Bonanza.
Growing up around airplanes, he planned a career in aviation but the economic recession when he left college in 2009 thwarted those aspirations.
“I came back home to work for the family business, and I quickly learned it was more fun to fly when you want than to fly when you have to,” the 37-year-old father of three said.
Fortunately, JWC allows him to connect the development and construction business with his passion for aviation.
“Aviation has always been at our core,” he said of the business. “We build a lot of FBOs, hangars and airfield infrastructure projects around the country. We’ve always loved working in aviation because we’re so passionate about construction and aviation.”
JWC also does significant work in the healthcare, life sciences, hospitality, education and commercial interiors sectors.
“We’re always using airplanes to move teams around quickly and efficiently,” he said. “About 80% of the time I’m not even on the airplane – my teams and customers are using them. My partner in the airplanes is not a pilot but he also loves the versatility and economics of using the aircraft to benefit his business goals.”
In 2021, the partners ordered an Embraer Phenom 300 and knew there was a multi-year backlog. While waiting for delivery, they began thinking about replacing their Cessna Citation S-II business jet with a twin turboprop.
“It was a mix of the operating cost of a legacy Citation combined with some of the tax benefits we could utilize,” Mickler said. “It just made sense to go buy an airplane that had a different mission capability.”
Mickler had familiarity and comfort with the Cheyenne series and his partner brought up the popularity and support available with the King Air series.
“We started looking at Cheyenne III and King Air 200 aircraft, and we soon realized the delta on the capital costs to go from a 200 to a 350 was nothing,” he said. “The only added burden of the 350 was the requirement to get a type rating.”
How it started
“The King Air market was crazy in 2023,” Mickler recalled. “I saw an ad pop up on controller.com for a King Air 350 based in Wharton, Texas – about a 90-minute drive from us. I followed the airplane on FlightAware when it was returning to its home base. I called the pilot as soon as he landed and told him I was at the airport and asked if he would show me the airplane.
“We made an offer on the spot and arranged a pre-purchase inspection at Million Air Houston.”
The appeal of this airframe was easy to understand: It had only 4,000 original hours and just 33 hours since engine overhauls. The downside was that not only had the airplane been underutilized for three decades as a Part 91 aircraft operated by a large farming business, Mickler felt it hadn’t received the care that most Part 25 aircraft receive. Records showed it had hopped around maintenance shops and there were other peculiarities.
“In fact, we came close to walking away from the airplane and made the owner a high concession offer that was accepted,” Mickler said.
Ultimately, the partners decided they would roll the dice, but not without help.
“Dean Benedict was paramount in my constant myriad of question asking,” Mickler said of the King Air maintenance authority who also writes for King Air magazine. “I hired Dean to come down and aid the FBO in the pre-buy, research and flight testing to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Dean was extraordinarily professional and a true pleasure to work with. At times, I think he thought we were a bit crazy.”
They took possession of FL-3 in July 2023 and immediately started a six-month restoration process. Aside from getting the aircraft caught up on its maintenance phases, they had props, gear and brakes done while awaiting paint and interior slots at Murmer Aircraft Services at Houston Southwest Airport (KAXH).
Their $450,000 ticket with Murmer included replacing cabin insulation, upgrading deicing boots, installing CoolView windows and AvFab window shades, adding interior and exterior LED lighting and refurbishing passenger and crew seats.
From Murmer, FL-3 was wheeled over to Temple Electronics for $250,000 in upgrades there.
“The previous owners installed a European STC that made it, to our knowledge, the only 350 in the U.S. with an approved GTN750 and Dual Garmin 600 installation, similar to what is found quite often in the King Air 200,” Mickler said. “While we liked this because our other aircraft had this set up, the fact that the autopilot had to remain the original King Air 350 Collins Autopilot was always a negative, coupled with the fact that we had to keep the original analog engine gauges. Temple recut the panel, cleaned up standby instrumentation, installed XI units and trouble shot multiple avionics issues the previous owners had learned to live with. Unfortunately for us this meant tens of thousands of dollars of chasing gremlins through a foreign STC.”
Temple’s work also included installing Avance L3 WiFi (“We didn’t realize this would soon become obsolete with the birth of Starlink.”) and the latest in annunciator panels from Luma Technologies to provide clear, crisp LED lighting in the cockpit.
They got FL-3 back in time for a full year of flying in 2024.
How it’s going
“Getting the airplane to the point that it was flyable and we could see the type of utility it had – that helped wash away all the pain of the journey,” said Mickler, adding that since he’d not previously flown a King Air he had no concept of its versatility.
The partners put 450 hours on FL-3 in 2024, flying as far west as Cabo San Lucas, as far north as the northeast Canadian border, as far south as Panama and as far east as the out islands of the Bahamas. An aircraft they had planned to only use throughout Texas proved to be fast and comfortable enough to be flown anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere and most of the time nonstop. Still, its bread-and-butter missions are sub-600 nautical miles.
“I never thought a King Air 350 could take our family, friends and employees to New York nonstop out of Houston in the middle of the summer. Being able to load up 11 people, their luggage and fly 1,200 miles is great,” Mickler said. “When you realize you essentially own a mini airliner that can take you pretty much coast to coast with one stop or anywhere in Central America nonstop, the world becomes a lot smaller with a 350. As soon as we started stretching her legs and seeing what she could do, we realized this is probably the most badass airplane we’re ever going to own.”
Late in 2024, they took delivery of the Phenom 300 they’d ordered in 2021. It made them appreciate the King Air 350 even more: short runway operation, less penalized by short cycles and wet or contaminated runways, better cabin seating configuration and greater weight flexibility.
“I always tell people if we knew how versatile the 350 was, we might not have ordered a Phenom 300,” Mickler said. “Truthfully, I think we’ve got the best of the light jet world and we’ve got the best of the turboprop world. I love the Phenom 300 but I’m in love with the King Air 350.”
Flying with the Phenom’s Garmin G3000 flight deck for four months also made them realize they needed to bring the final chapter of FL-3’s upgrades to life.
“Once we realized the capability of the Garmin integrated systems, we decided the King Air 350’s avionics needed to be upgraded to the G1000 NXi,” Mickler said. “We wanted to upgrade not only for value reasons but for safety and support.”
Stevens Aerospace in Tennessee completed the avionics work in late May, and Mickler said Stevens will continue to be FL-3’s maintenance partner along with local mechanic Roy Hoefar of Trident Aviation Services handling day-to-day needs alongside Million Air Aviation Technical Services.
Managed by American Jet International DBA Million Air Charter and based at William P. Hobby Airport (KHOU), the King Air is flown for the partners’ use an average of four days a week. Mickler is one of four pilots who bounce between their Phenom 300 and King Air 350.
“We gave FL-3 a new breath of life and now she’s flying a lot,” Mickler said. “Everyone loves and adores her, from our employees to our customers to our families. This really did become a love story.”
Photography by Andy Phan unless noted
JWC’s Aviation Construction Services
CEO Sean Mickler isn’t the only one at Jacob White Construction who is passionate about aviation. The company’s hands-on knowledge of aviation runs deep, with every corporate officer and many members of their staff holding private, commercial or airline transport pilot ratings.
Chances are you’ve seen work completed by their Aviation Construction Services division. They’ve built many private hangar facilities and handled airfield infrastructure projects around the country. Clients have included the Federal Aviation Administration, the Smithsonian at Johnson Space Center and Raytheon, among others.
They are long-time collaborators with Texas-based Million Air. Among the many projects done in coordination with the FBO network are departure lounges, office spaces, hangars, ramp spaces, parking and fuel farms. Recent projects include Million Air White Plains (KHPN) and Million Air Austin (KAUS).
“This year we’ve used the King Air a lot to go back and forth to Marathon for a cool new FBO concept in the Florida Keys that’s going to mix an FBO with an island-like eatery where visitors can watch planes coming and going,” Mickler said. “We’ve also made trips to Austin and Addison here in Texas for Million Air projects, as well as Bozeman, Montana, and Birmingham, Alabama.”
He said building aviation facilities goes beyond constructing buildings, it’s about creating spaces that keep the aviation world moving smoothly, efficiently and safely.
“Between my degree in airport management and air traffic management and my team’s background in aviation, we know the operational needs and understand regulatory requirements, including how to navigate the entitlement process with airport authorities. It helps that we understand the language.”