How it started
History
On February 8, 1980, Beech Aircraft Corporation became a subsidiary of Raytheon. In August 1993, Raytheon Company acquired British Aerospace Corporate Jets (producers of the midsized British Aerospace BAe 125 line) from British Aerospace and renamed the company Raytheon Corporate Jets. In mid-September 1994, Beech Aircraft Corporation and Raytheon Corporate Jets were merged to form Raytheon Aircraft. Raytheon decided to use the Hawker name to show the lineage of the series from Hawker Siddeley and Hawker Aircraft.
2000s
In early 2002, Raytheon announced the return of the Hawker and Beechcraft brands after having marketed them as Raytheon aircraft at the National Business Aviation Association annual convention.
Raytheon announced in July 2006 the sale of its aircraft manufacturing business to focus on its core defense-related business. Bidders for the company included The Carlyle Group, Cerberus Capital Management and Onex Corporation.
In October 2006, Raytheon Aircraft Company commenced a US$16.3-million 112,000-square-foot (10,400 m2) facility expansion for Hawker 4000 completion work in Little Rock, Arkansas. The expansion included a new 54,000-square-foot (5,000 m2) hangar bay, as well as extensions to existing buildings to provide additional woodshop, upholstery, sheet metal and storage space.
From Wikipedia’s article on Hawker Beechcraft, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2