He’s only had use of FL-586 for six months, but Ben Giles is certain he’s found paradise in the form of an airplane: a 2008 Beechcraft King Air 350 he purchased in 2020 and had extensively refurbished and upgraded at Textron Aviation’s Indianapolis Service Center. “This is the aircraft we will keep forever, or as…
Lately, it seems there is always “something” happening in the world that derails the stability of the aviation ecosystem. In 2020, it was COVID. The pandemic brought the aviation industry to a screeching halt, causing all of us to look at each other asking questions that nobody knew the answers to. COVID sparked serious concerns…
Author’s Note: The following article comes from a chapter in “The King Air Book, Volume I.” It has been abbreviated and simplified here to appeal to more King Air operators. The King Air B100 model is unique, as most of our readers know, in that it is the only production model in the King Air…
The Model A17F and A17FS were like no other Beechcrafts ever built – powerful, brutish machines whose high performance was nothing short of spectacular for their time. Despite America’s bleak economic situation, Walter Beech and his chief engineer, Ted Wells, held tenaciously to the belief that there was a small, but profitable market for a…
Garmin® International, Inc. recently announced that expanded engine monitoring capability is now available for select Beechcraft King Air 2001 aircraft with the addition of the TXi™ Engine Indication System (EIS) display. King Air 200 owners and operators will benefit from the TXi EIS with features like engine timers, exceedance recordings, dynamic engine indications, as well…
It’s tough for Jeff Lowe to fly his 1979 Beechcraft King Air C90 past an airport that is home to an aftermarket completion center. As co-founder and president of Aviation Fabricators – or AvFab – he knows each facility is a customer or prospective customer for the interior parts and components his company designs and…
Few things are more annoying than finding a puddle of fuel on the hangar floor the morning after a flight. A B200 I was consulting on recently manifested just that. Fuel leaks that crop up suddenly can result from recent maintenance where a seal wasn’t seated properly or where a fitting was left loose. Another…
I began as an instructor at the Beechcraft Training Center on Jan. 3, 1972. If anyone had told me then that I would still be teaching King Air pilots in 2022, I would have thought they were crazy, but so it is. To steal a line from “Saturday Night Live:” “King Airs been very, very…
Throughout its illustrious history, the Beech Aircraft Corporation has distinguished itself as one of the world’s premier manufacturers of general aviation airplanes by consistently setting the pace for competitors to follow. Early in 1932, Curtiss-Wright engineer Theodore “Ted” Wells was completing the design of a cabin biplane featuring a powerful static, air-cooled radial engine and…
Pilot Proficient has developed an online King Air 200/B200 familiarization course designed for the pilot who is transitioning into the King Air 200 and covers pertinent aircraft systems, limitations, operating characteristics and tips and tricks. The course includes multimedia presentations, in-cockpit video demonstrations and an interactive aircraft systems section to illustrate the concepts, with quizzes…