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“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.” - Shawn Edgington
The F90 before (left) and after (right) a full refurbishment at Textron Aviation’s Tampa Service Center and Wichita Service Center. (Before photos courtesy of Textron Aviation; after photos by Ricardo Reitmeyer for Textron Aviation)
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.”
AUGUST 2024
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 9