Page 8 - June 2022

First flight of the Super King Air 200 on October 27, 1972, (L to R) LeRoy Clay, Chief Project Engineer; George Hum- phrey, Sr. Vice President; Bud Francis, Test Pilot; Mrs. Olive Ann Beech, CEO; J.D. Webber, Chief of Flight Test Research and Development; Frank E. Hedrick, President; J.N. Lew, Vice President Engineering and Jack Marinelli, Vice President Aircraft Research and Development. (Cour- tesy: Scott Francis)
followed leads to come up with a long list of potential inductees. We discussed each one, made sure they fit our criteria and then narrowed down the list. We decided since this was the first class of the Hall of Fame that we needed to address those who would receive it posthumously, as it has been almost 60 years since the King Air was introduced.
Posthumous Recipients
In hindsight, it’s easy to believe that the development of a turboprop executive aircraft was a very logical decision, however, it wasn’t in the early 1960s. It was actually counterintuitive considering what was happening in the general aviation industry at the time. From 1961- 1963, Lockheed’s JetStar was introduced and the first flight of Hawker Siddeley’s DH125, North American’s Sabreliner, the Lear 23 and Falcon 20 were recorded. The conventional wisdom would have been to develop a pure jet aircraft, but the King Air leaders at Beechcraft did just the opposite. They identified the weaknesses in the emerging jet aircraft, one being the turbojet engines were not only high-priced, but also had high fuel consumption and were noisy. Beechcraft decided to develop a turboprop, executive aircraft known as the King Air 90.
6 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
In honoring these counterintuitive leaders, the inaugural posthumous recipients are:
Olive Ann Beech
The most obvious nominee was the CEO of Beech Aircraft at the time the King Air was developed. Mrs. Beech not only approved of but advocated for the King Air 90, which entered service in 1964.
In 1950, after Walter passed away, Mrs. Beech assumed complete control of the company at a time when women weren’t considered for company executive positions. CEOs know that it takes guts to make risky business decisions and she could have played it safe. Developing a turboprop, executive airplane when her competitors were developing jet aircraft was very risky; some would argue that it was even dumb.
She led the company for 30 years and continued to support the King Air, backing the development of the many variations of Beech Aircraft’s popular turboprop. In 1980, the company was sold to Raytheon and Mrs. Beech retired in 1982. She died at the age of 89 in 1993, but not without an abundance of accolades including:
= Being named one of the 10 Highest Ranking Women in Business by Fortune magazine
JUNE 2022