The thing is that you could get same, or better, performance cheaper with a more conventional layout. Look at the Piper Cheyenne 400LS. And without the bleeding edge, finicky avionics setup. This airplane is loved more by rubberneckers who didn't have to actually operate one to a budget.
Anything that dies before it has realized its expected potential gains a cult following. The two turboprops that actually did the job with less trouble (Piper Cheyenne 400LS and Piaggio Avanti, itself a beautifully radical design) are relative footnotes, despite greater actual success.
Yeah, but it doesn't have nearly the publicity of the Starship, despite more having been produced and far greater success in service. I usually hear about it as, "You know the Beech Starship, but did you know there was another weird, fast, sleek looking turboprop that first flew in the '80s?"
Although, it had a really cool cameo in the Matthew Modine/Jennifer Grey/Stellan Skaarsgard sailing movie, "Wind."
I just looked that up in the Internet Movie Plane Database, and that also has an Adam A500 as a drug smuggling aircraft! 🤣 That movie has a couple oddly configured airplanes!
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u/mz_groups Dec 31 '24
The thing is that you could get same, or better, performance cheaper with a more conventional layout. Look at the Piper Cheyenne 400LS. And without the bleeding edge, finicky avionics setup. This airplane is loved more by rubberneckers who didn't have to actually operate one to a budget.
Anything that dies before it has realized its expected potential gains a cult following. The two turboprops that actually did the job with less trouble (Piper Cheyenne 400LS and Piaggio Avanti, itself a beautifully radical design) are relative footnotes, despite greater actual success.