C90 King Air Conversion

Isabel Goyer

Monday, August 10, 2009 at 08:00 AM ET

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Refurbished 1979 King Air C90 Robert Goyer

Key Takeaways:

Cutter Aviation successfully transformed a 1979 King Air C90 into a highly desirable aircraft, demonstrating that older planes can be made significantly better than their original factory condition through strategic modern upgrades.
The extensive refurbishment included new paint and interior, a full Raisbeck C90 Epic package (Blackhawk engines, Quiet Turbofan Props, Aft Body Strake for performance and payload), and a Garmin G600 glass cockpit.
These upgrades dramatically improved the aircraft's speed, climb rate, payload capacity, and cockpit functionality, resulting in a King Air that felt and performed like a new model and sold quickly for an estimated $1.5 million.

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New King Airs are wonderful airplanes, but they do cost what new airplanes of that caliber cost. As with any new model, a factory-fresh King Air gives you a lot of things you can’t retrofit affordably, if at all, into a 20- or 30-year-old airplane. That’s why people keep buying new King Airs.

While there are a lot of mods available for older King Airs, the end result is not going to be an airplane that’s as good as a new one — as much as you might wish that to be true. What you can get is one that is, without question, better than it was back when it was new.