Page 8 - March24

The combination of the type rating requirement and corporate owners being less concerned about value retention at resale had caused King Air 350 values to soften compared to other models. As buyer’s reps, the best buys we made prior to the pandemic were in the 350/350i markets.
The lower end of the King Air 350 market also kept a cap on the micro-market for the King Air 300. Those who know me know that I have always been a huge fan of the King Air 300, partly because the model was always a lot of airplane for the money. Most people didn’t know what the 300 was, so lower buying pressure allowed the nicest King Air 300 to suffer under a value cap of about $2 million because early King Air 350s could be purchased for around $2 million. It didn’t make sense to pay over $2 million for a 1980s vintage King Air 300 when you could get a 1990s vintage 350! Especially since both require that dreaded type rating. This artificial cap on the King Air 300 market created some great buying opportunities and nice ones often sold for less than comparable Blackhawk B200s, sometimes as low as non-Blackhawk B200s!
The King Air B200 dominated the “old normal” market because of the sheer number of airplanes that were manufactured. It is the single most prevalent block of turbine aircraft in history, with over 1,300 built between 1981 and 2008.
The B200 market became the standard by which other King Airs were valued, meaning the King Air 90 series values directly depended upon the B200 values. As with the King Air 300 market, the market and values
of 90 series King Airs were artificially capped by B200 values on the upper end and that cap caused the values
of King Air 90s to be very compressed. A 2000 C90B didn’t sell for a lot more than a 1990 C90! There were two pet markets in the 90 series – the King Air F90 and the C90GT. Those two aircraft were also micro-markets, and as a result the lower buying pressure meant that good deals were often available, even in an already compressed market. The depressed resale values of the later model King Air 90 series like the C90GT/GTi/GTx, drove potential buyers into other models such as the King Air 250 and the Cessna Citation M2. This would become a major factor in Textron Aviation’s decision to ›
6 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
MARCH 2024