Page 6 - Volume 14 Issue 3

Here we are a year later, and I’m being asked to do it again? Never one to shy away from sticking my hand in the proverbial fire for a second time, I accepted the challenge and then went about trying to figure out how to explain the unexplainable. To say that the King Air market got weird last year would be an understatement. I saw airplanes sell for well above what I considered to be fair market value and simultaneously witnessed airplanes sell well below what I thought they were worth. There was a particular King Air that sold last year that was such a great deal, I was sick that we didn’t have a client for it. My sorrow was short-lived though, as we made unbelievable buys on not one, or even two, but three King Air 350s in a row.
W hy?
How do you rationalize that the market is good and potentially bad for sellers at the same time? How do you explain to a buyer that we might get a smoking deal or might have to pay more than we like for a pristine airplane?
It’s Complicated
The answer to the status of the market is that overall it is good; King Airs in general are in high demand. However, that is where the generalizations must stop, if one hopes to grasp the increasingly complex King
Air market. It is huge, with an astounding 84.2 percent of all King Airs ever built still in service; that is a lot of airplanes! In fact, there are more Beechcraft King Airs flying than all models of Avanti Piaggio, Cessna Conquest, Merlin, Mitsubishi MU-2, Pilatus PC-12, Socata TBM, Piper Cheyenne, Piper M series and Turbo Commanders ... combined. Not only are there well over 6,000 King Airs still in service, but they range in year and model from a 1964 King Air 90 proudly wearing data plate LJ-5 to the latest King Air C90GTx having a difference in serial numbers of over 2,000! New versions of the latest models – the King Air C90GTx, 250, 350i, 350ER and 350C – keep rolling off the manufacturing line.
The King Air is the most prevalent, highly popular and extremely recognizable turboprop ever built. The result is a huge market with aircraft values from just over $100,000 for a flyable King Air 90 to a reported $10 million for the latest military version of the -67 powered Special Missions King Air 350ER. No other aircraft market is as large and complex as the King Air market. If it wasn’t complicated enough, the King Air caught the eye of a brilliant individual named James Raisbeck. Nothing like an airplane having a $200,000 swing in value based on structural upgrades. It doesn’t end there, another James (who happens to go by Jim) decided that King Airs needed bigger, more powerful engines.
Those looking for a King Air C90A/B want higher-powered engines and Garmin avionics.
4 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
MARCH 2020