Beechcraft 1900 variant
Beechcraft 1900 1900
The original design, with two airstair passenger doors — one forward, one aft — and a small cargo door. It flew on 3 September 1982 and only three airframes were built, all in the UA series.
- September 3, 1982
- First flight
- 3
- Units built
- 19
- Passengers
History
A stretched King Air for the feeder routes
The 1900 was Beechcraft's third regional airliner after the Model 18 and the Model 99, and came straight out of the Super King Air: a pressurised cabin, two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-65B turboprops and a lengthened fuselage seating nineteen. The company wanted an aircraft able to work in any weather from relatively short runways and to take on the Swearingen Metro and the British Aerospace Jetstream, which then owned that market.
The initial version kept the King Air's aft airstair and added another just behind the flight deck, plus a small door for the baggage compartment. It flew on 3 September 1982 and the Federal Aviation Administration certificated it on 22 November 1983 under the special SFAR 41C rules. It entered service in February 1984.
Three airframes and little more
This original configuration had a very short run: only three aircraft were completed, with serial numbers UA-1, UA-2 and UA-3. The first two were stored at a Beechcraft facility in Wichita, Kansas; the third, registered FAB-043, flew in Bolivia until it crashed in November 2011. Two airstairs were soon judged excessive on a nineteen-seat aeroplane, and that rethink produced the 1900C.