For 90-year-old Carey Hobbs, flying has never been just a pastime – it is a way to serve, to connect, to explore. He discovered his love for the skies as a Marine aviator and has been a pilot for 67 years, owning two Beechcraft King Air aircraft in his lifetime: the A90 he flew for three decades and the E90 he still owns.
“I see my life as a remarkable flight. It’s been an extraordinary journey. Challenging, yes, but also full of joy and marked by adventure,” the nonagenarian wrote in “Piloting Life,” his autobiography published in January 2026.
King Air magazine talked to the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award honoree about his experience with the beloved twin-turboprops and the various business, recreational and humanitarian missions he’s flown.
“Being a pilot and having an airplane enabled me to do things I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise,” he said.
Discovering his love of the skies
Hobbs’ path to the King Air cockpit began when he served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk pilot between the Korean War and Vietnam War. He enjoyed his low-level, high-stakes carrier ops missions and is proud of the time spent flying one of the highest performing aircraft of its era.
At the completion of his service, Hobbs went to work and started using airplanes as a business tool in growing his company. Hobbs Bonded Fibers headquartered in Waco, Texas, is a manufacturer of specialty nonwoven products used in automotive and industrial applications as well as materials for bedding and crafting, such as quilt batting.
“Flying has contributed a lot to why we were so successful,” he said. “We sold air filtration media and then acoustic insulation for the automotive industry and had customers all over the country. Our business was in a small town in Texas, a long way from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. When people would fly in to see us, we would pick them up in Dallas and then fly them to Groesbeck where our plant was.”
The first aircraft Hobbs owned was a Piper Navajo. He acquired a used one then ordered a new model in 1979. He flew those piston-powered, twin Pipers until his mission demands required a plane with longer range.
“I bought a used A model King Air (serial number LJ-288) in 1984. The gentleman who owned it before me flew P-51s in World War II and decided that the A model wasn’t quite enough airplane for him, so he used the Beechcraft modification that extended the wings 3 feet on each side and put the -28 engines on it. Then it became kind of a hybrid E model that was 750 pounds lighter,” Hobbs explained. “I owned this King Air for 30 years and just loved it. It was the perfect airplane for our mission.”
Keeping his wings
The Texan logged about 8,500 hours in LJ-288 over three decades. The dispatch reliability of the 1967 aircraft was exceptional throughout that time.
“King Airs are simple to fly and upkeep, and mine was pretty much trouble free,” Hobbs said. “During my 30 years flying it, I made roughly 2,500 trips and there were only three times that we ever went out to the airplane and had troubles where we couldn’t fly. That’s a remarkable record. I used the same great mechanic for the entire time I had that King Air, and he knew the ins and outs of the King Air.”
Like other King Air owners, Hobbs highlights many positives of the aircraft.
“The size of the King Air, for one thing, was just perfect for us. I usually fly by myself with one or two other people, but if I need to carry four or five, I have the space to do that,” he explained. “I also like their range. Going to the East Coast, I can make it nonstop and with just one stop coming back. I recommend King Airs for anybody.”
The seasoned pilot, who received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award in 2015, only has good things to say about the aircraft. It came as a surprise to those close to him that after three decades of faithful operation, he decided to ditch the King Air for a jet. He earned a Cessna Citation type rating on his 83rd birthday.
“The only downside with the King Air, like with any airplane, is that it’s not fast enough,” Hobbs said, somewhat jokingly. “Other than that, I can’t think of any downsides, but I thought I wanted a jet. I bought a CitationJet in 2024 and flew it for a while. But it just wasn’t the right airplane for my mission. It was more expensive to maintain and it was not suitable for my mission – most of my trips now require traveling within the state of Texas.”
Sometimes, Hobbs wants to go as far as Crested Butte, Colorado, which is where the longer and faster legs of the Citation were useful, but the allure of owning a jet wore off and he decided to buy an 1978 King Air E90 model (serial number LW-294) with a Blackhawk conversion.
“I flew the King Air myself until I was 86 years old, and then the insurance company wouldn’t insure me anymore unless I had another qualified copilot on the flight,” he said. “So, after 61 years and 12,500 hours of flying in total, I thought it was time to move on to the next phase of my life and let somebody else fly it. Nothing lasts forever.”
That doesn’t mean he got rid of the King Air, though. “I have a pilot now and I get to sit in the back of the King Air, drink a Coke and take a nap – which I enjoy.”
How did Hobbs manage to stay insurable for so long, even having had a quadruple bypass at age 76? He doesn’t have any special insight, but his story is proof not to hang up your wings too young if you don’t have to.
Flying for good
While he would rather be flying, time in the back of the plane has allowed Hobbs to think about all the great times spent in the air and the friendships that aviation has fostered. Some of these memorable flights were for recreational purposes and others were in support of human-
itarian endeavors.
“I have flown my King Air out of grass and gravel strips. We went to Canada for several years to fish and landed on a gravel strip by a lake up in northern Saskatchewan. I also flew it in Alaska and to friends’ strips at their ranches,” he said. “That’s another thing I like about the King Air: It’s so versatile. You can almost put whatever you want to carry in it and it’s powerful enough that you can get on relatively short runways and take off. This has suited me very much because I have a short attention span and like to do different things.”
PHOTO CREDIT: STEPHANIE SEIBERT
Hobbs flew his close friend, Phil Gramm, to visit hundreds of Texas cities during the politician’s various campaigns. Hobbs even took a 14-month break from managing his business to support Gramm’s first senatorial run. Gramm served six years as a U.S. Congressman and 18 more years as a U.S. Senator.
“I use the airplane to help other people and we have an organization here in Waco, World Hunger Relief, that’s been in existence for a long time. They go to third-world countries with the goal to teach people to raise their own food. They asked me one time if I could take someone down to Haiti,” he recalled, noting that the airplane was loaded with the passengers and a stack of sedated goats before heading to Cap-Haitien in the northern part of the country. The aircraft was a head-turner and a lot of the locals got the chance to look inside.
Another example of using the King Air to help others happened when his best friend’s daughter was awaiting a kidney transplant at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
“They told her she would only have six hours to get up to Minnesota if they called her with a kidney,” he said, adding that other pilot friends were on standby to cover the flight if Hobbs or the King Air were unavailable. “It was about one o’clock in the morning when they got the call from the Mayo Clinic that she needed to get to Minneapolis and we were able to get her there. She celebrated her 27th year after the transplant recently, and I always felt very fortunate to have an airplane and that we were able to do that for her.”
Enough memories to
fill a book
Ninety years of living have given Hobbs enough stories, personal reflections and lessons learned to fill a book. So, he did. In his recently published autobiography “Piloting Life,” Hobbs takes readers along the journey through all periods of his life, from growing up in the oilfields of New Mexico to attending Texas Tech University, serving in the Marine Corps and having a family while building a successful business.
The volume includes plenty of anecdotes from his six decades of flying, including one story titled “You Can’t Be This Calm” that tells about a tense situation during a VFR flight to the Texas coastal city of Galveston.
“Immediately after takeoff, the gauges in my plane went haywire, and the radio cut out and came back on. I thought, What on earth is happening? I radioed Waco Tower and told them I had a problem and needed to come back and land.
I quickly realized that the plane was having an electrical failure. Everything powered by electricity had stopped working. The gear indicator, which shows whether the landing gear is down and locked, was out. I lowered the gear anyway, hoping the wind would help it settle into place. I made two passes by the tower, and they gave me a green light that the gear appeared to be down and locked. Understanding that may not be the case, I decided to make the landing as smooth as possible.
I had rolled about 2,000 feet down the runway, and the gear appeared to be okay. Then, all of a sudden, the right main collapsed. I used the reverse thrust of the props to keep the airplane on the runway. After another 500 feet, the left main collapsed. The airplane then skidded to a stop. The nose gear never collapsed.”
Hobbs went on to write that he was thankful for the safe landing and that the airport fire and rescue team commented on his calm demeanor in the face of an emergency. Then they showed him photos and videos they captured of the incident including “a picture of my plane, tail down, resting in the aftermath of it all. And behind it, stretching across the sky like a silent promise, was a rainbow.” He said that’s when he knew why everything had turned out okay – it was always in God’s hands.
“Piloting Life” can be ordered on Amazon or at careyhobbs.com, with a portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to support the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. Updates about Hobbs’ story, as well as additional tales from his time in the cockpit and other endeavors, can be found on his Facebook and Instagram pages @careyhobbsauthor.