Present Day Status of the Starship

The rumors are true: the Starship line is indeed being put out to pasture. It's unclear just how much longer Starships anywhere will be flying, for the clock, it appears, is inexorably ticking. Raytheon has been quietly buying back its Starships, offering attractive terms and trade-up programs to the company's newer, modern jet aircraft.

The Starship was finally, inevitably, doomed by economics—which seems to kill more planes today than traditional factors like reliability, safety or the end of a technology life cycle. While Starships were made to last forever, in that they were the first airframe with such advanced composite technology that their hulls literally didn't have decommission dates, there just weren't enough of the plane made for Raytheon to be able to justify keeping the line alive. A Raytheon spokesperson has been quoted as saying "the costs of supporting the fleet are prohibitive. There are many parts on the Starship that are unique to that aircraft. We have a backlog of parts, and will part out those aircraft that are being decommissioned to add to that backlog." (Read Aviation Week & Space Technology's June 30th, 2003 article on the subject.)

Industry observers suggest the Starship fell victim to a confluence of factors. First, it was both a radical design breakthrough, and a radical manufacturing technology breakthrough - and while you can always improve one or the other, some in the business say messing with both at the same time can be a recipe for failure. Add to that the fact the sales and marketing divisions of Beech Aircraft, the original manufacturer, aggressively pre-sold the plane. So when production delays and FAA certification stretched years past original forecast delivery dates, demand began to wane. Customers eventually went elsewhere. It appeared the final screw in the coffin was the economic climate of the late 80s into which the Starship was finally introduced. An economic recession had taken hold in the U.S. Out of fiscal austerity, many of the corporate customers that'd actually wanted to buy Starships chose not to, for fear of shareholder criticism.

The radical design that Beech hoped would transform its company into a leading purveyor of personal and commercial transport aircraft of the future, a next-generation Boeing-type empire, was just too different. It was arguably the wrong thing (or maybe it genuinely WAS the right thing) at the wrong time.

The Starship fleet is being gathered by Raytheon at the Pinal Air Park near Tucson. Some are being stored. At least two have been donated to museums [details of first, details of second]. Some are apparently being disassembled for parts to support Starships still flying. Some say Raytheon is intent on repurposing their bits and pieces for use in military drones. For now, the nine or so Starships still in private hands will have the chance to continue flying ... until the price for parts becomes prohibitively high.

• Photo of the Starship graveyard at Pinal Air Park, courtesy Peter Lauer
  
• Closeup of one Starship with propellers and at least one engine removed
  
• Another view from the ground at Pinal

Learn about or buy Dallas Kachan's
Starship book.
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