Page 5 - Volume 12, Number 3
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The King Air has been in continuous production since 1964; during those 54 years, there have been many different models produced. From the original 90 to the current 350i, there have been over 7,000 units manufactured encompassing an impressive 25 separate and distinct models of the King Air. There are at least ten variants of the Pratt & Whitney PT6 engine used, with several distinctive airframes.
With all of the various incarnations of the King Air, there are many submarkets within a market. For example, the B200, which was introduced in 1981, has at least seven submarkets within its production, making it impossible to generalize the entire market. The market for a 30-year-old B200 is different from that of a five-year-old 250.
Because there are so many market types, in this article we will again focus only on the variants that are still in production – the C90, the B200, and the King Air 350.
Although we are not going to discuss the older King Air models here, that doesn’t mean those renditions are not active aircraft without upgrade options. All King Air models, except the original 90 and some special mission aircraft, showed sales activity in 2017 and there are avionics, equipment and engine upgrades available for virtually all of these models.
s View
Each spring, we take an in-depth look at the market for some of the most popular King Air models. This
Collins Pro Line 21 avionics were added to the King Air C90GT in 2008, and it was rebranded as the C90GTi.
The C90
For this discussion, I am going to talk about the King Air C90B through the model GTx. When looking at the C90 market, there are several defining points where the market views a production change significant enough to affect value beyond an adjustment for the model year.
The C90B was an improved version of the C90A. Introduced in 1992, this model featured new four blade propellers, Collins avionics, and cabin soundproofing.
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 3
year we are going to do something a little different. Not only are we going to analyze the market for 2017, we are going to look
long term at historic trends.
MARCH 2018
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