Beech's PD290 King Air

simkid22

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Over on Wiki there was mention of a King Air that was designed to enter the private jet market...does anyone have anymore information on it and maybe some plan views? From the description, it kinda sounds like a weird predecessor to the Honda Jet.

PD 290

The King Air 200 design proved to be sound, and so Beech considered a jet-powered version in the mid-1970s. The first prototype King Air 200 was re-engined with Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D turbofans in overwing nacelles. Given the designation PD 290 (for Preliminary Design), the aircraft was flown in this configuration for the first time on 12 March 1975. Beech did not pursue production, and the last flight was made on 30 September 1977. Beech later purchased the Mitsubishi MU-300 Diamond design, producing it as the Beechjet 400.
 
No plan views (sorry) but, IIRC, it was more like the early EMB-145/ERJ-145 studies where the turbofans were mounted directly on top of a more-or-less unchanged Brasilia wing (as opposed to the Honda Jet's VFW 614-style pods).

The point of the Embraer exercise was maximum commonality between EMB-145 and EMB-120. I'm guessing that Beech had the same thing in mind with King Air and PD290 components.
 
I do believe this is the beasty you're looking for... info and photo's seem to be very thin on the ground, there's a rumour that the a/c still exists engineless at boulder colardo though...

Zeb
 

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