London Stansted-based Titan Airways has added a Beech King Air 200 to its fleet. Mike Cooper, contracts manager of Titan Airways, talked to EBAN about the aircraft.

“It’s a quick change variant so we can pull the seats out at short notice, and it has a freight door in the side so we can get reasonably sized pallets in,” he said.

“A few years ago we operated a CitationJet, and it’s a similar sort of aircraft from the point of view of the passenger market: Although the King Air is a prop, the speeds are not hugely different. The cabin is marginally bigger, more flexible, and the freight conversion is picking up work.”

Freight is clearly a big market for Titan, which operates two ATR 42s with 46 seats and which are convertible for five tonnes of freight. It also has three convertible BAe 146s. However, all the aircraft have installable leather seats in business-type configurations. “We don’t do the cheap and cheerful end of the holiday market,” said Cooper. “We typically take guests out to motor launches for car companies. The quickest we have changed over the 146 is 23 minutes.

“We looked into the market. There didn’t seem to be a lot of UK capacity for one tonne aircraft. There are a lot of King Airs in the UK, but not with freight doors. If you can put the pallet straight onto the aircraft, there is a degree of premium in being able to load up so quickly,” he said.

The Beechcraft has been transporting car parts to factories around Europe to keep production lines stocked at short notice: “It might take, for argument’s sake, radiators from Ford’s Basildon plant up to Liverpool to go in the new Jaguars. It’s purely ad hoc, they get peaks in their production lines.

“And also every now and then the French lose their rag and the only way to get parts through to Europe is to go over the top with aircraft to keep the lines running.

“We don’t do that on long term contracts. The King Air fits nicely at the bottom end of this, from 500 kilos to 1,200 kilos.

“Passengers the aircraft has been carrying are mainly business executives. At the moment there is somewhat more interest in that side of things because of what happened in America. One or two people are perhaps keener to fly on private aircraft than on scheduled services, which is understandable,” said Cooper.

“Passengers are all screened now, rather than walking straight through [security]. Previously we tended to have all our passengers go through security, but they weren’t all screened on private aircraft.”

The aircraft is also moving crews for Titan Airways’ larger aircraft. And recently it was in France to transport “a very outsized gentleman” weighing 24 stones back from France, who was helped through the freight doors.

The King Air is not booked up for the near future, reports Cooper. “As with any new aeroplane it takes a while for the brokering fraternity to realise it is on the market. It’s the same with all our fleet, because we are an ad hoc company. We tend to start with a clean sheet at the beginning of the week or month

and fill it up.”