With the help of Beechcraft King Air operators, Textron Aviation hopes to form the largest peacetime airlift with at least 200 aircraft flying to Orlando Executive Airport on June 4, 2022. That would mean a Textron Aviation aircraft taking off or landing every two minutes, taking Special Olympics athletes and coaches from their home bases…
When you think about what a Green Beret does in his free time, you likely don’t envision him sewing in his garage. But that’s exactly where you’d find Ross Johnson in the evenings when he was on active duty as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces. While serving three tours in Afghanistan, Johnson…
After working several years at Beech Aircraft, I had heard the Raisbeck name in relation to the King Air, but I didn’t realize the impact that James Raisbeck had on the ever-popular turboprop until I became editor of the King Air magazine. I interviewed James shortly after the magazine was launched in 2007. That conversation…
James D. Raisbeck’s innovative modifications to the Beechcraft King Air product line provide owners and operators with a series of upgrades that improve the airplane’s capability, utility and overall value. “Mr. Raisbeck has made our aircraft faster, given the owners of our airplanes the usage of more airports through lowered calculated landing speeds, and provided…
The King Air Gathering (KAG) scheduled for Sept. 23-26, 2021 has been postponed due to the uncertainty associated with the Delta variant of COVID and the challenges it may pose for travel and safety. The new dates for the KAG are May 12-15, 2022 and have been coordinated and confirmed with the event sponsors and…
The roll-up door retracted upward as sunlight beamed through the opening. Beacon steady; green. Go, go, go! Thousands of feet of air; around a minute of free fall followed by a graceful drifting back to reality. Another takeoff in an aircraft followed by a biped landing. Jumping out of “perfectly good airplanes” is something that…
In Part I of this series, we explored two of Colorado’s amazing national parks and the airports that serve them – Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), northwest of Denver, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (BCGNP), just east of Montrose. Colorado has two other national parks worthy of your exploration. However, if you…
An old joke among pilots is that flying to anywhere in eastern Colorado is basically just a flight into western Kansas. Indeed, the eastern one-third of Colorado has more in common with Kansas and Nebraska than it does with the mountainous terrain that Colorado is famous for. What is easy to miss is the steady…
Available spots are filling up every day for the 2021 King Air Gathering (KAG) being held Sept. 23-26 at the Beechcraft Heritage Museum adjacent to the Tullahoma, Tennessee, Regional Airport (THA). If you are thinking you might like to attend, you may not want to wait much longer to register as space is limited. If…
When Textron Aviation asked the Stefanopoulos family if they would consider changing their order for a Beechcraft King Air 350i to be the first customer to take delivery of the upgraded King Air 360, it was easy to say yes. The only question they had was why the company chose them since they are “just…