Curtiss Wright

Beech Aircraft Company was founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1932 by Walter Beech as president, his wife Olive Ann Beech as secretary, Ted A. Wells as vice president of engineering, K. K. Shaul as treasurer, and investor C. G. Yankey as vice president. The company began operations in an idle Cessna factory. With designer Ted Wells, they developed the first aircraft under the Beechcraft name, the classic Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing, which first flew in November 1932. Over 750 Staggerwings were built, with 352 manufactured for the United States Army Air Forces and 67 for the United States Navy[8] during World War II. Beechcraft was not Beech's first company, as he had previously formed Travel Air in 1924 and the design numbers used at Beechcraft followed the sequence started at Travel Air, and were then continued at Curtiss-Wright, after Travel Air had been absorbed into the much larger company in 1929. Beech became president of the Curtiss-Wright's airplane division and VP of sales, but became dissatisfied with being so far removed from aircraft production and quit to form Beechcraft, using the original Travel Air facilities and employing many of the same people. Model numbers prior to 11/11000 were built under the "Travel Air" name, while Curtiss-Wright built the CW-12, 14, 15, and 16 as well as previous successful Travel Air models (mostly the model 4).

Products Beechcraft Model 2000 Starship Beechcraft 1900D Main article: List of Beechcraft models As of July 2019, Textron Aviation was producing the following models under the Beechcraft brand name: Beechcraft Bonanza series – single-engined piston general aviation aircraft Beechcraft Baron – twin-engined piston utility aircraft Beechcraft Denali (Super) King Air C-12 Huron (military version) Beechcraft T-6 Texan II/CT-156 Harvard II – single-engined turboprop military trainer, based on Pilatus PC-9