Are they making the Beechcraft King Air F90 again?
That’s the question David and Shawn Edgington hope to inspire when you see N721RF/serial number LA-190 sitting on the ramp. A gleaming paint scheme with a playful color palette, BLR Aerospace five-bladed Whisper Props, American Aviation’s Pitot Cowling System and Aerodynamic Speed Stacks – the airplane looks like it rolled off the assembly line this year.
It sorta did.
David spent eight years looking for just the right F90 and got everything he wanted with LA-190: 5,200 hours (the average for a 1982 F90 is 13,000 hours), three prior U.S.-based owners, no damage history and solid maintenance records including recent engine overhauls by Dallas Airmotive. He was patient because he hoped to find a model from 1982, when they were delivered with the commemorative insignia of Beechcraft’s 50th anniversary. LA-190 came with an anniversary plate signed by Olive Ann Beech still in place on the panel as well as several celebratory medallions from the original cabin.
(Photo credit: Ricardo Reitmeyer for Textron Aviation)
He felt like the only thing to do with an airplane with such a stellar pedigree was to modernize it. “This aircraft deserved it,” the 8,000-hour pilot and Beechcraft enthusiast said. “It is a special aircraft delivered during a special year in Beech history. You’ll never find another one like it.”
The F90 went to Textron Aviation’s Tampa Service Center immediately after acquisition in September 2023, embarking on what would be an eight-month complete interior and exterior refurbishment. The Edgingtons live in the San Francisco Bay area and chose a shop on the opposite coast because of the Tampa team’s history of working on Beechcraft King Air products.
“I have a friend in the business and I’ve been fortunate to go with him to pick up and deliver airplanes all over the world. Not only has that given me the opportunity to fly a whole bunch of different kinds of aircraft, I’ve also visited a lot of shops across the country with him,” David said. “I wanted to do everything that we could do to modernize this aircraft to today’s time. I knew it would be a major project, and I wanted to do it Beech style.”
Why the F90?
David said he’s always been an aviation enthusiast but couldn’t afford it as a hobby when he was young. “Being able to afford to fly motivated me,” the 62-year-old said. David operates businesses in the construction industry; Shawn is CEO of a national insurance brokerage specializing in business insurance. Together they work in residential and commercial real estate investment, development and design of high-end properties.
David’s been flying for more than three decades and the Edgingtons have owned several aircraft over the years starting with a V-tail Beechcraft Bonanza purchased in 1994 to fly for business and recreationally with their family of four and two golden retrievers. They’ve also owned a conventional-tail Bonanza, a King Air C90, a previous F90 (N188BF/serial number LA-78) and a Dassault Falcon 10 jet. They purchased a Citation CJ4 jet new from Textron Aviation in 2017, which they continue to operate, with David flying it alongside corporate pilot Stephen Harden.
“I truly loved my first F90 aircraft – to me it was the coolest looking airplane out there,” David said of LA-78. “At that time in my flying career, though, I was moving up and transitioning to flying jets.”
(Photo credit: Ricardo Reitmeyer for Textron Aviation)
The F90 stayed on his mind, though he was willing to wait for the right one to come along. Beechcraft manufactured just a few more than 200 F90s from 1979 through 1985. Known for its ramp presence due to the distinguishing T-tail from the King Air B200, the model features a C90 fuselage combined with an A100 wing. David’s research showed about 172 F90s still flying per FAA records, though he estimates there are likely half that many truly in use.
‘An Amazing Transformation’
About a month before he finalized the purchase of the F90, David reached out to Textron Aviation’s Jennifer Harden, senior manager of Aftermarket Sales for Southeast U.S., who started to coordinate with the company’s service centers in Tampa and Wichita.
“From first contact, our team was excited about the scope of the project and the fact that it was a 50th anniversary edition,” said Dan Lyon, vice president of Aftermarket Sales, Textron Aviation. “We recognized it right away as a cool opportunity to get to take a commemorative aircraft some 40 years after it rolled off the assembly line and make it new and vibrant again.”
He added: “We’ve done some big projects but I don’t believe we’ve done this big of a modification on an airplane that’s 42 years old. The Edgingtons pretty much went all in, and the result is an amazing transformation.”
Tampa Service Center handled all the work except the paint; Wichita is one of two Textron Aviation Service Centers to offer full paint, strip and refinish capabilities (Indianapolis is the other).
Lyon said it was a complex job because of the amount of work being done, the age of the aircraft and the fact that tweaks and mods in the past four decades meant it was no longer a standard configuration airplane. David said all those reasons were why he wanted the OEM to handle the project.
“It really worked out well having the Beechcraft team’s deep understanding of the airplane and having them orchestrate getting all the parts and keeping such a major project flowing,” David said. “One of the biggest benefits was that normally when we’ve done this kind of project, on a smaller scale, we have a representative there the whole time with the aircraft. We didn’t have to do that because they took on that responsibility on our behalf.”
Shawn agreed: “It was nice to have such a great team that we could trust and work together so well, despite being on opposite coasts.”
The Edgingtons said it was heartwarming to see how personally involved in their F90 the employees became, with everyone working toward “what can we do to build this aircraft the best way possible” whether it was avionics, cabin or exterior updates.
“Joe Clark was head of the project in Tampa and as we got to know each other, he caught on to my thought process behind building this airplane, which was ‘don’t leave anything behind,’” David said.
That was especially helpful when redesigning the flight deck.
“We were not saying throw money out the window, because you can spend a lot of money and have the panel still not look right,” David said. “I wanted to know with all their talent and experience, what would they do when building a new panel. We tried to not look at it as a dollar value but instead look at it as a clean palette and figure out how to make the panel flow correctly. As an example, when we pulled the GPS antenna off, for dollars you could patch it but we went ahead and removed the antenna and reskinned that area.”
David spent weeks working with the Tampa team on creating a pilot-friendly panel that flowed well aesthetically and functionally, testing it out with pilots of varying skill levels to gather feedback before finalizing the design.
“We couldn’t put the Garmin G1000 NXi in it because they don’t have certification for it, so we did G600 TXi and G750 TXi and then we put everything internal. There’s nothing on the panel, everything went remote. With autopilot, weather and turbulence avoidance, the avionics are as good as what we have in our Citation CJ4,” he said, adding that 350 pounds of wiring was removed from the F90.
Shawn put her passion for interior design to use throughout the interior as well as on the exterior paint.
“We wanted this to feel like a brand-new airplane, from the second you walked up to it to climbing into it,” she said. “My goal was a look that was beautiful and luxurious, something that 99.9% of people would instantly love. I think we achieved that with both the interior and exterior designs.”
They completely reconfigured the cabin, redoing the bulkhead, installing a side-facing fifth seat and adding a flushing water closet in the back. All soft goods were replaced along with new cabinetry, window shades and seats featuring the design and materials of current production aircraft plus hidden headrests and double diamond quilt inserts. The Edgingtons chose a custom mix from Textron Aviation’s King Air Refresh interior schemes, from a carpet with a subtle square pattern to help hide wear to a window line and headliner in custom-colored urethane that brings brightness to the cabin.
(Before photos courtesy of Textron Aviation; after photos by Ricardo Reitmeyer for Textron Aviation)
“We use our airplanes for mostly business so we also wanted all the conveniences of an office to extend into the aircraft while traveling,” said Shawn, mentioning LED lighting and AirText connectivity as examples.
Exterior upgrades included installing the American Aviation Pitot Cowling System and Aerodynamic Speed Stacks and painting the aircraft to match the patented scheme and color palette the Edgingtons designed for their 2017 CJ4.
Enjoying a ‘New’ Airplane
The Edgingtons’ children are grown and they now have Kahoots the French bulldog and Max the golden retriever who is the insurance agency’s mascot known as Lightning Max. They flew their CJ4 to Wichita in mid-April for a LA-190 delivery ceremony. David and Harden had flown the airplane from Tampa to Wichita, but this was the first time they were seeing the airplane in person since it was painted.
Textron Aviation’s sales and marketing teams positioned the F90 inside a hangar at their west Wichita headquarters, with dramatic lighting including the aircraft’s original Beechcraft 50th anniversary insignia projected onto a nearby wall. The couple walked into the hangar with their French bulldog while the song “Hell of a View” by Eric Church played. They circled the airplane and said they were in absolute awe.
“It looks perfect to me,” David told those gathered. “This is better than taking delivery of a brand-new airplane.”
The airplane had one more stop – back to Tampa for the installation of the flushing water closet custom built by AvFab – and by the end of April, the Edgingtons were able to start flying the F90.
After looking for the right King Air for eight years, David said waiting eight months to start flying it regularly wasn’t a problem.
“Being in construction, I was realistic about the timeframe,” he said. “Everything had to be built and they had to search for the materials, which today isn’t easy no matter what industry you’re working in. I was very happy with the timeframe, and beyond happy with the final result.”
He noted that they had just two minor squawks when they picked up LA-190 in Tampa before flying it to Wichita for paint.
“They did an incredible job,” David said. “To make something that old look brand-new is incredible.”