If the History Channel is correct that might be the only one still in existence. The rest were bought back and scrapped. One of the most beautiful planes ever built.
Very cool. I have only ever seen one once, and read quite a bit about them. Looks like a great design. Too bad they never really caught hold in the market, I wonder why the canard/pusher design isn't used more often.
According to the mountain flying instructor we were with and also that Wiki page there are 6 left that are FAA certified and flying. There are a few flying, but most of the 54 or so were taken back off lease and destroyed. Several were bought and not leased although Beech was able to buy back some of those too, several owners refused.
I think it was an episode of Modern Marvels "Boneyards" that featured one particularly dedicated owner. He apparently bought the entire stock of spare parts from Raytheon and two airframes to insure that his plane survives.
There's one sitting here in Tucson at the Pima Air & Space Museum http://www.pimaair.org/collection-detail.php?cid=8
There is one based here in Addison, TX that flys on occasion. Great plane just too early for acceptance. the Piaggio 180 is catching on quite well. With the newer version, that pusher canard is very efficient. "jet speeds and turboprop prices" The Piaggio Avanti is on my dream airplane list.
Great idea, but unfortunately way ahead of its time. The Piaggio P180 uses a similar configuration but with 3 lifting surfaces rather than 2. More efficient and roomier than most jets and a beautiful design to boot. The canard also makes it very safe. http://www.piaggioaero.com/#/en Edit: Repeat of above.....Great minds respond alike! I was just too slow.
This site says 5... http://www.bobscherer.com/Pages/Starship.htm The FAA registry comes up with 9 still in registry... http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/AcftRef_Results.aspx?Mfrtxt=BEECH&Modeltxt=2000&PageNo=1 But 4 of them are listed in Kansas, owned by Beech, leaving 5 in private hands.
The Piaggio is a much better airplane-- the Starship was just too heavy, and didn't meet the performance goals. That's the difficulty with being on the bleeding edge of technology. In the end, a King Air 300/350 was a better airplane.
Starship N8285Q for sale here. http://www.controller.com/listingsdetail/detail.aspx?OHID=1145210 Asking price is $1.7M. I wonder how they set the asking price for such a rare bird? Apparently it takes $4m - $7M for a nice used Piaggio. Here's an example. http://www.globalair.com/aircraft_for_sale/Twin_Turbine_Aircraft/Piaggio/P-180__Avanti_II_for_sale_54535.html .
Pics of the actual one for sale: http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?regsearch=N8285Q She's a beauty. I'm not a fan of the Piaggio's looks. Looks overweight/pudgy...
Can you RVSM a Starship? Looking at FlightAware, it doesn't look like this one has flown since July. I wonder if Beech will buy it...
I seem to recall reading an AIN article earlier this year about an owner that has an RVSM'd Starship.
Given the state of the economy and private plane sales being down, I doubt they will throw $1.7mm at this just to scrap it. If they do, that's a terribly run company imo.
As you are in Portland, OR, maybe you know. Isn't there one of these dudes parked outside/behind the Evergreen Air Museum? I was there 9-2008 and believe I observed one of these behind the museum building.
There might be-- I was just out there a couple of weeks ago, and I don't remember seeing one, but it was raining and I wasn't outside much. Several Starships did go to museums, for sure. There's one in Tucson, for example.
The Starship was flawed from the concept and its development issues further compounded the problems. If it wasn't for Raytheon's deep pockets the program would have been killed early. When the Starship was conceived oil was high and expected keep going higher. Interest were high too. Burt Rutan had done his canard homebuilt and it was all the "buzz". Into this environment the Starship was to become a King Air successor. Problem one was that it had a very small cabin; King Air is far more spacious. Problem 2 was that the performance was to be just marginally better than a King Air but more fuel efficient. Fast forward through a hugely troubled development (aka: missed every "to market" date ever established) and the result is no better than a King Air but at the cost of a Hawker. By this time oil has fallen to lows and a major economic expansion is going strong. Wrong aircraft, wrong price, wrong time. Compare this to the Piaggio Avanti. From the very beginning the concept for the Avanti was to provide Citation performance with tuboprop fuel burns. Interior size was to be comparable to the Falcon 20. The fuselage shape is for laminar flow - no constant cross section length. Compare block times and it takes a long flight before the jet actually starts to get to destination quicker. Jeff
Jeff pretty much hit it right on the nose. The biggest problem was that the drag of the aircraft wasn't as low as they thought it was going to be. Rutan did a subscale model and they took the drag estimates from that. Turned out that approach was optimistic and the end result had more drag than they had planned. This has happened on several programs that Scaled did, and the end result hasn't worked out well. Could have been that when the program went "over the wall" to Beech the NIH factor kicked in and things got heavier and more draggy (if that's a word) than what Scaled planned. Remember too that this was early in the time of certifying composite aircraft so there could have been FAA requirements that added weight. Also they had to add a lot of complexity during development with the swinging canard surface. Seems that they got caught dancing with that girl "Rosie Scenario" and didn't figure it out until it was too late. Bottom line was a lot more cost for not much performance gain and that doomed the program.
Weight was definitely an issue with the Starship. The FAA had a lot of concern about at that time about using a composite fuselage, so they forced Beechcraft to enhance the structure with a lot of aluminum. Once that was done, the weight targets were missed by a large margin and the performance suffered greatly. Still, the Starship is one fantastic looking plane.