Page 28 - Volume 15 Number 4

IN HISTORY
26 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
APRIL 2021
The King Arrives
The first King Air was caught in its element by a Beech- craft photographer during its maiden flight in 1964. The Model 90 ushered in a double jump in technology for business aircraft – turbo- prop power and a pres- surized cabin. More than 100 were built during the initial year of production. (Special Collections and University
Archives, Wichita State University Libraries)
In 1961 Olive Ann Beech listened intently to her loyal corps of vice presidents and engineers as they advocated a bold, new step for the company. To convince the “boss” that the risk was worth taking would prove no easy task, but Olive Ann was not afraid of a challenge – she had faced them many times before. Although she was not a pilot or an engineer, she was a superb business owner and had an enviable track record to prove it. Few doubted that fact, and by the early 1960s she had established herself as a rising star in the rough-and-tumble, capricious, male- dominated aviation industry.
As the decade of the 1960s unfolded, business aviation in America was poised to make a major transition from piston-powered to turbine-powered airplanes. Beech Aircraft Corporation would lead that transition by introducing the Model 65-90 – the first King Air.
by Edward H. Phillips