- The history of Hawker Aircraft Limited
- Comparing the Hawker800 to the Hawker750
- The history of Hawker Beechcraft Corporation
Hawker Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer responsible for some of the most famous products in British aviation history. Hawker has its roots from the early 1920s when Harry Hawker started Hawker Aircraft Limited and took advantage of the great depression in order to purchase other aircraft companies and start to design aircrafts. The Hawker legacy is maintained by the American company Raytheon who produced business jets under the “Hawker” name. The first Hawker was the Hawker Humpback in December 1920. That was followed by the Hawker Duiker and the Hawker Hind.
The Hawker 800 is a mid-size business aircraft. This jet is similar to most modern aircrafts with the fuselage sections, wings and control surfaces being manufactured and assembled in the United Kingdom in a combination of Hawker Beechcraft’s own facility. A variant of the Hawker 800 is the Hawker 750 and is a lower-cost, lighter-weight and shorter-range version of the 800. This jet competes with the Citation XLS and the Learjet 60. These jets are able to fly nine passengers over 2,400 nautical miles and are being sold for $10-$13.5 million.
Hawker Beechcraft Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturing company that built the Beechcraft and Hawker business jet lines of aircraft between 2006 and 2013. In 2006, Raytheon sold the company to Goldman Sachs and Onex Corporation. The deal left Raytheon with a heavy debt which made the company struggle to support itself with the economic crisis of 2008. In may 2012, the company entered bankruptcy, filing voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court.
