With AIN Media Group's Aviation International News and its predecessor Aviation Convention News celebrating the company's 50th year of continuous publication this year, AIN’s editorial staff is going back through the archives each month to bring readers some interesting events that were covered over the past half-century.

REWIND (MARCH 1980): Following ratification by the stockholders of both companies, Raytheon Co. acquired Beech Aircraft Corp. on February 8. Beech is now a subsidiary of the diversified electronics firm, headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts. As part of the merger, Beech chairperson Olive Beech and Beech president Frank Hedrick have become members of Raytheon’s board of directors while reciprocal privileges were granted to Raytheon’s chairman and president by Beech’s board.

FAST FORWARD: The 1980 sale of Beech marked the end of the airframer’s nearly half-century run as an independent company. By that time, the King Air family was already firmly installed as the premier turboprop twin line. In 1994, Raytheon merged Beechcraft with its newly acquired Hawker product line as the Raytheon Aircraft Company. Following the sale of the aircraft division to Goldman Sachs and Onex Partners in 2006, it become known as Hawker Beechcraft, which declared bankruptcy in 2012. It reemerged as Beechcraft Corporation in 2013 while shutting down the Hawker side, and later that year Cessna owner Textron announced that it would acquire Beech Holdings, the parent of Beechcraft Corp., for approximately $1.4 billion, thus bringing two of the “big three” golden-age GA manufacturers under the same parent umbrella for the first time.