Raytheon Orders Exotic Biz Turbines Destroyed

It was one of the most exotic looking business aircraft ever to fly. And now, because of its exotic nature, Raytheon has reportedly ordered the destruction of all its Beech Starships.  Starships have reportedly been arriving the Evergreen Air Center's heavy maintenance facility near Tucson (AZ). There, according to various media reports, six Starships have already been sawed into pieces and burned in an EPA-approved incinerator.

Why?

It's a valid question. After all, the FAA had no pending airworthiness issues with the Starship. In the business plane's seven year history, there had never been a fatal accident.

Actually, the answer is rather simple. Money.

"We decided to cease support of our 53 in the fleet and decommission those under our control," company spokeswoman Jackie Berger said in an interview with the Wichita Eagle. "It's purely a business decision."

"It's performance was not significantly better than the top-of-the-line King Air," said Ed Phillips, a bureau chief for trade publication Aviation Week & Space Technology.

In addition, the plane, which sold for more than $4 million, cost about twice as much as a King Air. The final blow: business jets took over the market the Starship was after.

So the end of the Starship wasn't unexpected.  Raytheon said it started accumulating Starships when it became apparent some time ago that support issues were growing at an unprofitable rate. Raytheon has reportedly never released a hard financial number on the cost of the Starship's certification program, but observers place the figure at between $500- and $800-million dollars.

"The things we learned from that aircraft are invaluable," Berger said.

Phillips agreed. "It was a good airplane," he said. "The market just did not embrace (it)."

Other observers have been harsher in their verdicts over the years. In its May 2, 1994 edition, four years after Starship deliveries began, Fortune magazine wrote of the airplane, “Rarely has a market repudiated any product the way buyers of business aircraft have repudiated this one. If the American Marketing Association were ever to carve up a mountain, Rushmore-like, commemorating misbegotten things, Starship would be there, next to New Coke and the Edsel.”

Museum Piece?

In the meantime, The Kansas Aviation Museum is reportedly talking with Raytheon about adding one of the ill-fated Starships to its collection. A decision on the donation request should be made by Raytheon in the next few weeks, according to a report in the Wichita Eagle. In fact, Raytheon is getting a number of requests for Starship donations from museums from around the country.

FMI: www.raytheonaircraft.com