In 1983, NBAA convention-goers who happened to be at the static display at Dallas Love Field at the right time witnessed a bit of history when a radical-looking airplane made a flyby. The flyby was the coming-out party for what would become the Beech Starship, an all-composite canard twin-turboprop that looked nothing like any other airplane ever built or even contemplated. Those who witnessed the flyby were looking at an 85-percent-scale proof-of-concept prototype built by Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan’s specialty outfit. The actual Starship finally achieved FAA certification in 1987, two years later than the projected end of 1985, but actually on time when one considers that new turboprops and jets typically take four years from drawing board to certification. Beech never sold all of the 53 Starships that it built, but for those who wonder what happened to those airplanes, here is the rest of the story.
Love for an airplane, not profit, has resulted in creation of what amounts to a one-man, third-party parts support operation for the iconic Beechcraft Starship.
Doomed to the shredders in 2003 by what Raytheon, then owner of the Beechcraft brand, said “was a sound decision from a business standpoint,” it appeared the Starship–of which only 53 were built after a market for the plane heralded as the replacement for the King Air failed to materialize–would be erased from aviation culture.
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