Romania's New Beechcraft Super King Air Plane Officially Enters Service, U.S. Ambassador Attends Ceremony

Jan. 18—The Romanian Civil Aeronautical Authority (AACR) officially welcomed today into service the new Beechcraft Super King — Henri Coanda' International Airport of Bucharest which was also attended by US ambassador to Romania Adrian Zuckerman. The new addition will perform radio navigation system calibration checks for landing and en-route navigation on civil and military airports, helping the authority fulfill its tasks related to flight checks over the next 20-30 years, AACR said in a release.

Fully equipped, the Beechcraft Super King Air costs almost 12 million euros and was acquired following a tender won by Beechcraft Berlin Aviation GMBH. It comes to replace its predecessor which, after 20 years of service, over 11,400 hours of flight and 5,240 landings, had reached a high degree of wear and obsolescence making it impossible to validate certain flight procedures and restricting the operation in the RVSM airspace, the AACR said.

The new Beechcraft was handed over to the Romanian Civil Aeronautical Authority in autumn 2020.

The new aircraft has cutting-edge Proline Fusion glass-cockpit avionics suite. The system integrates all flight and navigation information on three touchscreen displays, significantly improving crew efficiency and flight safety. With a maximum take-off weight of 6.8 tons and a maximum range of approximately 3,300 km, equipped with a UNIFIS 3000 Automatic Flight Verification System (AFIS), it allows high-precision flight surveillance and verification of air navigation means using state-of-the-art hardware and software.

" Romania is one of only a few countries in the region that own and operate such a plane," said US ambassador in Bucharest Adrian Zuckerman on the occasion of the event, and went on to remark that "as the United States and Romania work closer on projects from small but critical airplanes such as this, to the Cernavoda nuclear power plant, from the fight against trans-national crime and trafficking in persons to the latest military systems to ensure territorial integrity, it has been my mission as the United States Ambassador to Romanian to strength the ties between our countries. Our shared values of democracy, fair play, free enterprise and the value of entrepreneurship and small businesses make us natural partners and friends."

In his turn, AACR general director Armand Petrescu stated that through the new acquisition, "cooperation in the civil and military field acquires a new dimension and positions Romania as a player with strategic regional and European valences."

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