John Glidewell likes to imagine having been a fly on the wall in the early 1960s at Beech Aircraft Corporation during conversations between company president Olive Ann Beech, her engineering executives and engine supplier Pratt & Whitney as they were considering combining the proven airframe of the Model 80 series Queen Air with the gas turbine power of the new, innovative PWC PT6A turboprop engine.
“We’re fortunate that Mrs. Beech was willing to put her money and her name on the line when a lot of people were against the idea of the King Air. They didn’t realize they were building a turboprop that would outlast every other brand,” Glidewell said of the Beechcraft King Air Model 90 that entered service in 1964 and expanded quickly to a line of business turboprops that today tops 7,700 aircraft delivered.
“The way I look at it, we’re sitting here as owners and pilots reaping all the benefits of one of the most reliable airplanes ever built,” he added. “It seems like we should do something to honor the people who brought us these great airplanes.”
The King Air B200 owner and pilot was so sure other King Air devotees felt the same that he reached out to his friend Kevin Carson at King Air Academy, who founded and at the time was organizing the annual King Air Gathering events. They did some research and could not find a Hall of Fame dedicated to the King Air, so they got to work creating one. Both men were part of a selection committee that inducted the inaugural class of the King Air Hall of Fame at the 2022 King Air Gathering held at the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tennessee. The inductees ranged from early pioneers including Mrs. Beech and LeRoy Clay, who added the T-tail to the King Air 200, to recipients who have continued to improve the King Air line or supported owners and pilots of the King Air family, including James Raisbeck and Tom Clements (see box on page 5 for a list of all recipients).
This wasn’t the first time Glidewell has gotten an idea he can’t shake until he sees it through. He was fascinated with big trucks as a kid and turned that notion into a successful career, he got the flying bug when he was 30 years old and now has 9,000 flight hours, and he says he’s been hooked on the
King Air for the past two decades.
A passionate personality
Growing up on a North Texas farm, Glidewell knew he didn’t want a career as a rancher. When he was 10 years old, he started riding in a semitruck with a family friend who hauled aggregate for concrete, including crushed rock and sand.
“He asked me one day what I wanted to do when I grew up and I told him I was going to buy him out. He just laughed but about 10 years later I bought his last truck,” Glidewell said.
He started in the trucking business in 1975 when he was 21 years old with one semitruck. Today he is owner and president of Sunset Logistics, a Fort Worth-based transportation solutions company he founded in 1988. The company hauls crushed rock, sand and cement powder – all used to make concrete – in a variety of trucks. The Sunset Logistics fleet tops 500 including 300 company-owned and another 200 owner-operators and ranges from tractor trailer end dumps and tankers to super dumps and concrete mixers.
He said he got hooked on trucking because the big trucks were fun to drive and he enjoyed being on the go. He felt the same about airplanes when as a 30-year-old, he went up with a flight instructor at Meacham Field in Fort Worth. That was 1984 and by then Glidewell was no longer driving, but managing a growing fleet of nearly 20 trucks.
“I just got hooked on flying,” he said. “I got my helicopter rating and was flying a lot. I couldn’t get enough of it and realized I needed to figure out a way to use an airplane in the business. It turns out that was pretty easy to do.”
Combining flying and trucking
Glidewell moved from a Cessna 152 to a Beechcraft Bonanza A36 then to a Cessna 340 before buying his first King Air in 2000. He had the King Air E90 for 10 years before moving up to his current King Air B200 in 2010.
His flying career also aligns with the largest growth period in his business, which operates in every region of Texas – a large state with many areas that can take time to access by driving or flying commercially – and also crosses into Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
“We have terminals in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Tyler, Fort Worth and West Texas, where a lot of the airports are fairly small,” he said. “The King Air plays a big part in customer service, sales, and all of our public relations activities. It’s another tool in the Sunset toolbox and it’s helped us be successful.”
“The aircraft is dispatched for regular customer visits as well as unexpected service calls and safety surveys,” Glidewell said. He also uses it to take customers on golf outings and pheasant hunts. He’s flown throughout the continental U.S. as well as to Alaska and the Bahamas. He typically flies the King Air about 250 hours a year, though some years have topped 300 flight hours.
When he purchased the 1981 King Air B200, it already had the Raisbeck modifications he knew he wanted, including a ram-air recovery system, dual aft body strakes, wing lockers and Hartzell four-blade props. He added Garmin 650 and 750 touch-screen navigators and, in 2021, he had Murmer Aircraft Services in Houston repaint the exterior and refurbish the interior to look like a new 260 model.
Since he started operating King Air aircraft, maintenance has been handled at ProAviation at Meacham Field, where the aircraft is based. He has trained at King Air Academy since 2015 and has attended all of the King Air Gatherings along with about four Beech Party events in Tullahoma.
Is this his forever King Air?
“Well, I’m 68 years old and I’ve got it fixed up the way I want it,” he said. “I’m comfortable with it and I have a lot of time in it. I think it’ll probably be my last.”
Who knows, though, he could get another one of his ideas.