Page 5 - March 2023

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The current aircraft market is enough to make your head spin! Is it getting better or is it getting worse? Are inventory levels actually going up or is it just a bunch of junk listed on Controller.com? What will I pay? Am I able to complete a prebuy inspection? Is it still a seller’s market? Or is it a buyer’s market? What about supply chain issues? If I pay too much to buy an airplane, is that the end of my pain or just the beginning?
I heard you can’t get windshields, pre-coolers, wingnuts ... or pilots. What? Now we have to worry about aircraft parts too?
The company that makes Hawker windshields went out of business. The company that makes pre- coolers is in Israel, but the metal comes from Ukraine. What’s a wingnut and why can’t you get them? Tires? It’s also challenging to get new tires? What’s this unobtanium that everyone keeps talking about? With a client’s Hawker currently AOG waiting on gear parts and a Mustang in a prebuy at Textron waiting on pre-coolers, the jet world feels a little scary right now, but what about our beloved King Airs?
The answer is things are looking “pretty good”!
We are waiting for a King Air windshield, but it sounds like a delay, not a disaster. Our client just ordered Raisbeck Leading Edges and Ram Air Recovery for the same airplane and those items have already been received. There was a little wait for their lockers and sweet new 5-blade composite props, but we can deal with that.
The great news for King Air owners and operators is that other than a little hiccup in windshields, Goodyear tires and the lack of replacement automatic window shades for King Air 250s, we are faring really well.
This is mostly because the King Air fleet is the largest fleet of business aircraft ever produced, a total of 7,820 King Airs of various models have been manufactured! As of the writing of this article, there are still 6,165 King Airs listed as “in operation,” which is nearly 79%! That says a lot about the durability of these airframes considering the first King Air rolled off the line in 1964, but it also means that over 1,600 airplanes are no longer in operation – many of which gave up their lives so that their parts keep other King Airs alive. Their air- frames resting eternally in salvage yards from Kansas to Oklahoma, to Brandon, Mississippi (a shoutout to my buddy Carl at Davis Aviation). But it’s not just an abundant supply of used parts and spares, the net- work of vendors that manufacture components for King Airs is vast. In many cases, there is more than one supplier for a specific part or component. I mentioned Goodyear tires because they’re hard to get, but the Michelin tires are not, so in a time when many jets are grounded because of flat spots our beloved King Airs fly on!
What does this mean for King Air values and the King Air market in general? Stability.
The King Air market is still complicated, but it is stable. The first thing to understand is that it’s really several individual markets,
MARCH 2023
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 3