$5.8M for a King Air?

Hi all,

Was just reading the King Air article in this month's Flying and saw the
price w/ the new avionics suite (why they went with Collins is beyond
me, but that's another story).

Just wondering if I'm the only one who did a double-take at the price.
$5.8M for a KING AIR? Jeez...if anyone had to wonder why Raytheon/Beech
is having financial trouble, this is why. You can buy a nice Citation
for that, and while the King Air would be a sweet personal aircraft, if
I had that kind of cash burning a hole in my pocket I know what I'd be
buying with it!

Of course, given a Baron with steam gauge instrumentation is $1.3M this
overpricing thing seems to be a common problem with them. I'll grant
you the Beech and Piper products are targeted at different markets, but
$700K for the new Seneca V with Meggitt displays looks like a far more
reasonable deal to me.

Now, if only Piper would start building Cheyennes again...*sigh*.

-Doug

--
--------------------
Doug Vetter, CFIMEIA

http://www.dvcfi.com
--------------------