This year marks the 40th anniversary of the prototypical business turboprop, the Beech King Air. The airplane, to our knowledge, is the longest continuously produced civilian turbine aircraft. (The Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules is the only turbine aircraft that has been continuously produced for longer.)
It was in August of 1963 that Beech Aircraft announced its King Air. The airplane was a natural outgrowth of the company’s large piston-powered aircraft, but the addition of the Pratt & Whitney PT-6 powerplants immediately changed the nature of corporate travel. With its roomy six-to-eight-seat cabin, the pressurized King Air could cruise at the flight levels at better than 230 knots.
