Obtaining a Be2000

[Lrjtcaptain]

I work for a company out of Omaha that is about ready to buy a turboprop. The plane in discussion is a Turbo Commander with the Dash10's but another pilot and I were discussing that a BE2000 Starship would be one sweet plane to use. Spec's make sense but we can't find any for sale through THECONTROLLER.COM or ASO.COM. I was at KICT about 2 months ago and noticed about 12 parked there. Anyone know anything. Again, looking for possible BEECH STARSHIP.

 

[cessna_driver2]

There was a thread running on the other general forum about the starships. Someone mentioned that Beech bought all of them back due to high maintence.

We also have one that based out of KC here. I think it is some sort of lease back program from Beech itself. Hope this helps

 

[Dep676]

Stay far, far away from a Starship. They are maintaince hogs. There is a local operator that used to have 2 or 3 of them. When I interviewed there they were in the process of getting rid of them. The CP told me that when they were scheduled for MX it would be scheduled for 2 weeks and it would take twice as long. That happened everytime. I think I heard the same that Beech bought them back because of the MX issues. Don't even consider it.

 

[Rick1128]

I don't even thing that Raytheon's own charter system uses them any more. That should give you a good indication.

 

[CL600Pilot]

I flew a Starship for several years and it was an awesome airplane - I loved almost every minute that I flew it so it pains me to say this but PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND RUN FAR AND RUN FAST AWAY FROM THE STARHSIP - you DO NOT want a Starship!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Period. No ifs ands or buts - you do not want to own/operate one.

From what I've been told Raytheon would rather park the entire fleet rather than support it and they are in the process of buying them all back to do exactly that.

PM me if you want more detailed info - I would be happy to help.

CL

 

[GVFlyer]

I concur with what the other pilots have said about staying away from the Starship. I was at the Beech plant for the first flights of NC-1 and NC-2 and knew the Beech Chief Test Pilot for the program. He was convinced he was not going to survive certification. He insisted that they install a bang seat in the test article and then married a very young girl because he was not taking the long view of very much at the time. I recall that during "cert" one of the airplanes delaminated itself at Guam. The canard was never as effective as it was designed to be and the resultant was very fast approach speeds.

If you have your heart set on canards and pusher props, you might consider the Piaggio 180. I did a closed loop handling qualities evaluation of the airplane for the military. It would hit 395 knots at 28,000 feet, climb to 41,000 feet and go almost 1750 nm. Don't get me wrong, I still think that if it has props, it belongs in the water, but this was not a bad airplane.

The former Gulfstream Senior Vice President for Marketing, Jim Holcombe, is now Piaggio's VP for Sales and Marketing. You can contact Jim at 864.277.3979.

GV

 

[CL600Pilot]

Yeah the Starship had some 'interesting' aerodynamic tendencies to say the least. One example is the VMC speeds - it's been a while so someone correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember that in a single engine situation if the prop was not feathered the VMC was something like 135 KIAS. As a matter of fact a so called 'check pilot' for Raytheon Charter Services who had just checked out in the Starship himself was giving us our 135 rides and pulled an engine on one of our Captains right after takeoff - since he pulled the power lever the autofeather system deactivated and instead of pulling the engine to the simulated 'zero thrust' position of 5% torque he pulled it to idle which 'flattened' out the prop and promptly rolled the aircraft at a fairly healthy rate. Luckily our Capt had enough experience with the airplane that he caught it before it got too out of hand. It's not a natural feeling to experience that much of a bank angle and that low of an altitude.

CL