With AIN Media Group's Aviation International News and its predecessor Aviation Convention News celebrating the company's 50th year of continuous publication this year, AIN’s editorial staff is going back through the archives each month to bring readers some interesting events that were covered over the past half-century.
REWIND: (April 2014)Textron closed on its $1.4 billion acquisition of Beechcraft on March 14, bringing together Cessna Aircraft and Beechcraft to form Textron Aviation. Scott Ernest, Cessna’s president and CEO since 2011, was tapped to lead Textron Aviation as CEO. Meanwhile, Bill Boisture, chairman and CEO of Beechcraft since 2009, was omitted from the Textron Aviation senior leadership team and “is moving on to new opportunities,” a Textron spokesman told AIN.
While the two aircraft manufacturers are now combined within a single segment, “Cessna, Beechcraft, and Hawker will each remain distinct brands to preserve their rich histories and respective strengths in the marketplace,” the company said. The spokesman confirmed that “Bell Helicopter is not part of Textron Aviation, and that is not envisioned for the future.”
FASTFORWARD: For Textron, the key attraction in the deal was Beechcraft’s family of market-leading turboprop twins, which neatly filled a gap in the Cessna lineup between its piston-engined aircraft and its extensive jet offerings. The deal spelled the end for the Hawker brand, which had ceased production while Hawker Beechcraft was in bankruptcy before the purchase. It remained shuttered by Textron despite its “rich history,” and when queried two months after the sale concluded, Ernest said he had no plan to restart production, and that using the Hawker name for future jets “is not under consideration at the moment.” Nevertheless, he added, some Hawker technologies—involving composite materials, for example—could be used in other aircraft in the Textron family.
