Geminair, formerly known as Premiair Charter Ltd, has begun operating a Beech E90 King Air

for its owner, Marston Hotels. The group has 17 hotels around the UK and is currently using the aircraft

a couple of times a week to fly between locations.

Geminair chief pilot Adrian Barralet flew to the US in July to pick up the aircraft. He told EBAN: “I was over there for several weeks while it had a lot of work done on it. It’s had almost a completely new set

of avionics equipment installed, including Garmin 530 and S-Mode transponders, and has been brought right up to European requirements.

“I had most of the work priced over in the States because comparing the prices with those in the UK, was like comparing chalk with cheese. The work was completed by a Raytheon service facility and they had a very comprehensive avionics shop. It’s like a brand new aeroplane with its specially overhauled engines, new windshields and new props.”

Once in the UK, Geminair took the aircraft to their former namesakes Premiair Aircraft Engineering, who did all the necessary work for the import of the aircraft and in putting it on the full public transport register.

Although Geminair is now in the process of placing the E90 King Air on its charter licence, Barralet says for the time being it will primarily carry out private missions. He said: “Marston has a lot of major construction work taking place at hotels in York, Sheffield and Basingstoke so we’re transporting people for site meetings and the like.

“In addition to the trips between hotels, the chairman also uses the aircraft for flights to his home in Parma. So far, we’ve done two flights down there and he was very impressed with the aircraft’s performance.

“We may eventually get to a situation whereby the aircraft is being used as much for charter as it is

for private flights, but the majority of the flying right now will be private only. Certainly we’ve one or two customers for our other aircraft, a Partenavia, who would like to step up to the King Air so we’ll introduce them to it in due course.” Before choosing the E90 King Air, Barralet says he looked at a range of different aircraft from the Citations down to the Seneca and Baron. He said: “Once we knew the Parma trips were part of the equation, it was pretty much a straight decision between a Citation and a King Air.

For several reasons, including price, it soon became clear that the turboprop was the preferred option. Said Barralet: “I selected the E90 King Air very carefully because it’s got the 200 wing and therefore holds a lot of fuel, it has an uprated engine – the Dash 28 engine – and it gives you a wide range of options in terms of range and payload.

“So that was a major consideration, which we had to marry in with the fact that we are able to operate this single crew. Also, if we’d gone for a Citation, a lot of the airfields that we planned to use close to the hotels are quite marginal with a jet. We also wanted to be able to use one or two of the good grass runways like Rochester – so this turned out to be the best compromise.”

The Beech E90 King Air has a four seat club arrangement, with two seats in the rear of the aircraft – one facing sideways and one is a proper belted seat on the toilet. With the two pilot seats included, the aircraft carries a maximum of seven passengers but Barralet says he doesn’t envisage carrying more than four or five people at any one time.

Asked whether more aircraft would be coming Geminair’s way in the near future, Barralet said: “We’re not actively looking to increase the fleet but if it develops into something more, we’ll be delighted. At the moment, we’re intent on giving our existing clients the very best professional service.”