Deciding to do the XP67A Blackhawk conversion on our King Air 300 was the best decision we have made. It meets every expectation that was presented to us and has performed in a way that gives us better safety margin while saving us money year after year. When I go to recurrent and share my stories, everyones eyes get big when I describe my rocket ship of a King Air to them. I would highly recommend that anyone considering the Blackhawk conversion—do it. You will not regret it!!
Heck yeah the XP67A Upgrade is great! I have put about 240 hours on the engines so far. Just took a trip, Dayton to Naples FL310 – FL320 330 KTAS. Doing everything you said it would.
I’ve done a bit of contract work in an older CE-550. Having now seen both those, and our 350 in action it puts things into perspective. Leg times are nearly identical, the jet burns 33% more fuel and is significantly more uncomfortable in every way. I’m sure you know all this, but it was really interesting for me to see both aircraft side by side. Makes me really appreciate what we have.
The other big thing was time to climb. We can get to 34k in about 15-17 minutes. 28 minutes in the Citation.
It gets better with each flight because we keep discovering new features. The boss loves the noticeably quieter cabin from the 5 blade props. In the climb, we can peg the VSI all the way to altitude if we want with power left over. Or, we can climb at a comfortable 2000 FPM and keep our KIAS up. More power takes the worry out on top of the climb. We are no longer sitting on a pinhead at FL270. The faster cruise speeds balance out the additional fuel used.
The upgrade is remarkable.
These engines make it a whole new airplane—it’s more like a rocket ship. Fully loaded, we level off at FL310 in under 14 minutes, and our normal cruise speeds are consistently 30-40 knots faster. But the most impressive thing to me is the climb. I deploy the vanes to climb above weather and don’t fall below 1,000 feet per minute all the way up. We save 40 minutes on one of our regular flights from Las Vegas to our hometown of Colombia, Mississippi. The boss loves it, and fuel consumption is just about the same as it was pre-upgrade.