Page 4 - May 2022

COVER STORY
Paradise Fo Vacation home contractor builds perfect King Air
by MeLinda Schnyder
He’s only had use of FL-586 for six months, but Ben Giles is certain he’s found paradise in the form of an airplane: a 2008 Beechcraft King Air 350 he purchased in 2020 and had extensively refurbished and upgraded at Textron Aviation’s Indianapolis Service Center.
“This is the aircraft we will keep forever, or as long as I’m around,” said Giles, a custom home builder based in Destin, Florida, who has built hundreds of homes in his career and now focuses exclusively on luxury vacation homes. “It’s got everything we wanted: faster engines, the ability to carry nine or 10 people and all of our bags, new interior, new paint and upgraded avionics. It’s a unique airplane with everything that we did to it. It’s a 2008 model but we put in the 350i headliner right off the production line. We also put in electronic window shades, cabin moving map technology and XM Radio.”
While the airplane was out of service for modifications, Textron Aviation received the STC for ground cooling, eliminating the need to power air conditioning systems via
2 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
MAY 2022
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