Overview
Hawker Beechcraft was the Wichita, Kansas aircraft manufacturer formed in 2007 when Onex Partners and Goldman Sachs bought Raytheon Aircraft, bringing the Beechcraft and Hawker brands under one company. In this catalogue it is the home for that combined business-jet line – the Beechjet-derived 400XP and the composite Premier – whose roots run back through Raytheon Aircraft to Beech Aircraft of 1932. The company was restructured in 2013, and its assets now sit within Textron Aviation, which still sells the Beechcraft brand.
Heritage
Beech Aircraft was founded in 1932 in Wichita by Walter and Olive Ann Beech. Raytheon acquired Beech in 1980, then bought British Aerospace’s corporate-jet line – the Hawker family – in 1993, merging Beech and Raytheon Corporate Jets into Raytheon Aircraft in 1994. In 2007 that business was sold for $3.3 billion to the newly formed Hawker Beechcraft. The company entered Chapter 11 in 2012 and exited in 2013 as Beechcraft Corporation, discontinuing the Hawker jet line; Textron Aviation acquired it in 2014.
Design Signature
The jet line’s signature was a roomy-for-its-class cabin built on durable, often unconventional engineering. The Beechjet 400XP grew from Mitsubishi’s MU-300 Diamond, keeping its wide “square-oval” cross-section; the Premier went the other way, pioneering an all-carbon-composite fuselage to gain cabin width without weight. Across the range the recipe held: twin Pratt & Whitney Canada or Williams turbofans, straight or modestly swept wings, and Rockwell Collins Pro Line glass flight decks – aircraft that flew fast, sat high, and carried more cabin than their footprints implied.
For Owners
Every jet in this stable is now out of production, so ownership is a used-market proposition with support routed through Textron Aviation and its service network. The Beechjet 400A / Hawker 400XP offers a wide cabin and a 45,000 ft ceiling at a modest acquisition cost, tempered by a thirsty JT15D fuel burn; the Premier I / IA trades seats for speed and single-pilot, composite-cabin comfort. Both reward buyers who value cabin and capability per dollar over fuel economy, and who are comfortable operating a mature type supported across a finite fleet.