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2015 was an interesting time for us at Beechcraft. A year earlier Beech was acquired by Textron, and Textron Aviation had formed bringing three historic brands together—Beechcraft, Cessna and Hawker. One of the things that made Beechcraft very attractive to Tex- tron was its newly-minted partnership with Wheels Up. By May 2015, Wheels Up had taken delivery of around 31 Beechcraft King Air 350i aircraft. The 350i had im- proved upon the 350 by providing more payload and range while also adding a quieter cabin with WiFi. It also included Rockwell Collins’ new Pro Line Fu- sion avionics, a ground-breaking touch-screen system never seen before.
The big pink 350i delivered to Wheels Up was painted that way to help generate awareness for breast cancer research at the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai in the hopes of someday eliminating the disease. This was the 35th King Air taken by Wheels Up, part of its second bulk purchase of King Airs from Beech.
Throughout the years Wheels Up would apply several other liveries to help bring about awareness to various initiatives. There was a teal King Air highlighting ovar- ian cancer; a red one for heart health; a camouflage 350i benefiting the Tragedy Assistance Program for [military] Survivors; and an orange one to help raise awareness for food insecurity and Feeding America.
I had been working for quite a while with my coun- terpart at Rockwell Collins determining which past King Airs could qualify for a retrofit of the new Pro Line Fusion avionics. King Airs have been flying since 1964 in many configurations and with myriad avionics pack- ages, so it took a lot of thought to figure out what it would take, and how far back we could go, to offer fielded aircraft the Fusion upgrade. Many thanks to my friend Joe Razo from Collins (now retired tending his orchards and doing some consulting) for helping to unravel years of King Air tribal knowledge.
Back to the big pink 350i. This photo was taken on August 14, 2015, at around 8 a.m. We were getting ready to deliver it a few days later to Wheels Up and were going to make a big deal about it. I just happened to be in our delivery hangar at Beech Field on the east side of Wichita and had my little powerhouse Sony RX100 ii camera with me. I took 164 photos of this plane that morning, and they’re all still in my Adobe Lightroom app. It’s great to go back to photos you haven’t looked at for years and find one or two that you didn’t notice before.
Let me know if you’ve seen this 350i or other Wheels Up special liveried King Airs flying around. Happy shooting.
August 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 15