Beechcraft King Air 200

Where it came from

Beechcraft began the aircraft in 1969 as a development of the Model 100, and the change that defined it was the T-tail — 375 hours of wind-tunnel work went into getting the airflow off the propellers and away from the tailplane. The first prototype flew on 27 October 1972, the second on 15 December 1972, civil certification came in December 1973, and the first customer aircraft was delivered in February 1974. It was sold as the Super King Air; Raytheon dropped the "Super" from the marketing in 1996, which is why the same aeroplane appears under two names in old listings.

From 1981 the line was built with PT6A-42 engines rated at 850 shp, a higher pressurisation differential and a revised cockpit. That is the aircraft the European charter market supplies and the one the figures on this page describe. The next step came on 21 May 2007 at the Geneva show, with PT6A-52 engines and better altitude performance.

Nearly 7,600 King Airs of all models had been delivered by December 2020, which makes the family the most-produced business turboprop ever built. Today the 200 does air ambulance, survey, government and calibration work as well as charter — which is precisely why there is one parked at a regional field near most European cities.

Who charters a King Air 200

Most King Air trips are one of three things: six to eight people going somewhere under ninety minutes away, a group heading for an airfield with no jet-capable runway, or a client for whom the arithmetic of a light jet stopped making sense on a 300 km leg. It is also the aircraft that competes with driving rather than with flying — three hours on the autoroute against forty minutes in the air.

Against the very light jets — the Citation Mustang, the Citation CJ1 — it carries more people, takes more luggage, reaches unpaved fields and costs less per hour. It is also 100 to 165 km/h slower, which on a short sector matters less than most people assume. Against the Pilatus PC-12 the trade is sharper: the PC-12 has a bigger cabin, a cargo door and several times the range with a full load; the King Air has a second engine and a cheaper hour.

The honest limits

Range is where this type is most often oversold. The published 2,600 km assumes four passengers and IFR reserves. Load it to maximum payload — seven or eight people and their bags — and the manufacturer's own figure falls to about 750 km. It is payload-limited long before it is fuel-limited, so plan a full cabin around 600 to 750 km and treat anything longer as a four- or five-seat trip.

The rest is easier. Take-off at maximum weight is 792 m and landing 867 m, and the type is routinely operated from grass and gravel with the unpaved-strip kit; alpine altiports of the Courchevel class are still out. Baggage is 1.57 m³ for about 250 kg, in the aft cabin, heated, pressurised and reachable in flight — best in its size class. The lavatory is an aft belted seat behind a privacy curtain, emptied by the crew rather than serviced externally. The cabin is 1.45 m high: nobody stands up.

What the cabin is really like

The published 5.08 m of cabin length runs from the cockpit bulkhead all the way back, so it includes the lavatory and the baggage area — the seating section is shorter than the number suggests. Width is 1.37 m, the narrowest cabin on this site, and height is 1.45 m. The usual charter fit is a four-seat club with a pair of forward seats, boarding through an airstair door at the back.

It is a working cabin rather than a showroom one. Two propellers turning a few feet from the windows make it audibly louder than any jet here, and noise-cancelling headphones are worth bringing on anything over an hour. In exchange you get a hold you can open in flight and a door that swallows ski bags. On a forty-minute leg none of the compromises register.

The corridors it actually flies

Realistic block times with a full cabin: Milan to Nice about 40 minutes, Geneva to Nice about 1h, London to Paris about 1h 05m, Zurich to Nice about 1h 20m. Paris to Nice, at roughly 675 km, sits right at the edge of a full-cabin leg and is comfortable with four or five aboard at about 1h 40m. That is the type's honest map: corners of Europe, not crossings of it.

The speed penalty is smaller than the brochure comparison implies. At around 540 km/h against roughly 700 for a very light jet, a 500 km sector costs you fifteen to twenty minutes door to door — and the King Air often wins it back by using an airfield twenty minutes closer to where you are going. Past about 1,000 km the arithmetic reverses and a jet is worth the money.

What moves the price

Charter starts from around €2,000 per flight hour, the lowest rate on this site, and the hour itself is only part of the number. Positioning is usually the largest variable, and here the King Air has a structural advantage: there are many of them, based at regional fields rather than concentrated at the big business-aviation airports, so the empty leg to collect you is often shorter than a jet's would be.

Airport and handling fees are the second lever, and they favour it too. Most European fees scale with weight, and at 5,670 kg the King Air sits in a different bracket from any jet that seats seven or eight — on a forty-minute sector that difference is a visible share of the invoice. After that it is the usual: crew duty limits on a long day with a late return, and the season. Nice and Geneva in summer, the Alps at half-term, Grand Prix weekend. Every trip is quoted individually.