Planespotters in Central Queensland and the Fraser Coast often capture visiting corporate jets whether they have flown to the region from within the state, interstate or overseas, and among the many differing types of corporate jets, the Raytheon Hawker 800 is a fairly common sight, particularly due to frequent stop-overs by State of Queensland Raytheon Hawker 850XP VH-SGY.
On Saturday, 29 April 2017, VH-SGY again visited Central Queensland when the aircraft departed Brisbane for Gladstone, then onwards to Rockhampton (pictured) a short while later before eventually returning back to the state capital.
Originally developed by de Havilland, the Hawker 800 as we know it today originally entered production in the early 1960's as the Hawker Siddeley HS.125 (1962-1977).
When Hawker Siddeley merged with British Aircraft Corporation in 1977 to form British Aerospace, the aircraft designation changed to BAe 125 (1977-1993).
In 1993, British Aerospace sold it's Business Jets Division to Raytheon which then saw another name change for the aircraft. Yes ... you guessed it, as a Raytheon (1993-2007).
To further complicate things, when Raytheon sold it's Hawker Beechcraft division to a consortium in 2006, the aircraft then became known as a Hawker Beechcraft (2007-2013)
Sadly, production of the BAe 125 / Hawker 800 ceased in 2013.
