In the past two weeks, Ohio officials purchased a factory-new, nine passenger Beechcraft King Air 350i and a used six-passenger King Air 250. The cost was $5.4 million and $4.2 million, respectively. The planes will be used to shuttle Gov. John Kasich and other state leaders around the region on official business. To offset the cost, Ohio traded in two aged passenger planes to King Air manufacturer Beechcraft Corporation.
“The existing planes were old and starting to cost the state millions to maintain,” said Matt Bruning, Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman and state air fleet manager, “It was determined that due to rising maintenance costs and decreasing reliability the aircraft needed to be replaced.”
By trading in the old planes, a 1973 King Air and a 1982 King Air, Ohio was able to knock $1.3 million off the purchase price of the newer models. Beechcraft plans on refurbishing one plane and scraping the other.