Anyone here have any info on the Beech Premier 1?

Interesting, I'd just seen this, even though it's a couple years old.

They're talking about a quite a bit larger plane than the Avanti II... so they won't compete.


Piaggio Aero P1XX Jet Could Have 3,900-nm Range | Aviation International News


My guess is that a jet Avanti wouldn't offer enough of a performance increase (speed and economy) to be worthwhile. The Avanti II is already at the 'top of the game' for turboprops... nipping at the heels of small jets as it is.

Also guessing that they might want to go to composites... the Avanti II is a sheet metal plane (contemporary of the Beech Starship, but Piaggio thought it was too big a reach to do composites then - they may have been right).

 

The Starship would have bankrupted just about anyone else as they undertook to develop and certify it. It was the depth of Raytheon's wallet that kept it a float. Linden Blue's failed legacy. This was then followed by two more disastrous development programs that again relied upon Raytheon's wallet: Premier and Hawker Horizon4000. Raytheon/Beech-Hawker kept proving their incompetence in new aircraft development. They were so bad that Learjet/Bombardier's lousy development management seemed good.

The Piaggio approach was to taken proven answers and add one new component: 3 lifting surfaces. Metal and PT6 were well understood commodities.

Jeff

 

The whole time Beech should have been developing the Pilatus.

 

Maybe so but instead they were enamored with the Burt Rutan concept and how to change the world with a different build process. The FAA is very slow in embracing new materials and this came to haunt Raytheon.

If anyone remembers, the Avanti was at first public announcement going to have Learjet as the partner. That was in the days before Bombardier; can't remember if it was Charlie Gates or had already moved on to Integrated Resources.