Photo: Matt Thurber / AINOnline.com.
Innova Aerospace brought two King Air 90s to EAA AirVenture 2016 to highlight the company’s pending STC for installation of the BendixKing AeroVue flight deck and its paint and interior refurbishment and re-engining programs. One of the King Airs, a A90 model, is parked at Innova’s display area near the Textron Aviation pavilion and is equipped with both the AeroVue avionics suite and GE’s H80 turboprop engines plus fresh paint and interior, and a C90A equipped with the AeroVue flight deck is located at the BendixKing display.
The re-engining program stems from Innova’s purchase of the Power 90 Walter (now GE) upgrade program from Smyrna Air Center more than a year ago. Innova’s upgrade replaces the original Pratt & Whitney Canada engines with GE H80s, although the A90 on display was equipped with Walter 601s, which were replaced with H80s. Compared with the PT6A-135A-powered C90A, the H80-equipped King Air 90 adds 10 percent range, lowers specific fuel consumption by 8 percent and adds 90 shp for a power output of 800 shp per engine. The H80 conversion is available now on the C90 and E90 models, and Innova is adding more H80 STCs for other 90-series models in the first quarter of 2017.
During the flight to Oshkosh from Innova’s Sabreliner facility in Perryville, Mo., both the A90 with the H80 engines and the C90A with the AeroVue cockpit flew the same route, although the modified A90 added three touch-and-goes at Perryville before departing for Oshkosh. The trip included two stops for fuel (one of the airports had no fuel), and after landing in Oshkosh, the re-engined A90, flying at about the same speed as the C90A, had burned just 60 gallons of jet-A, while the unmodified C90A burned 130 gallons.
This article originally posted on AINOnline.com.
