(October 2011) In today’s challenging used biz-jet market, it’s safe to say that value is everything and that even then it’s sometimes not enough. This has led to some remarkable refurbishment programs designed to take much of the used airplane part out of the equation while actually giving buyers better performance — in some cases much better performance — than the airplane could boast when it was rolling through the factory doors.
A few years ago a new company, Nextant Aerospace, started by Flight Options principal Ken Ricci, sprang up to fulfill a need. That need wasn’t to refurbish Beechjets. In fact, in terms of brand and model, Nextant was agnostic. Its mission was to create a very affordable like-new airplane for the fractional/jet card market and to do it at less than half the price of a comparable new bird.
