Hawker 800XP / 850XP / 900XP

Updated: October 2026 – A midsize jet with rear-mounted engines rolls past on the business aviation apron, the wingtips curve upward, the horizontal stabilizer sits halfway up the vertical fin. Chances are you are looking at a Hawker 850XP or 900XP – or an 800XP that someone has treated to winglets. The Hawker 800 line is the late and most successful stage of a family that began in 1962 as the DH.125. Here you will learn how the versions relate, how to recognize them and where to get them in front of your lens in Europe.

What is the Hawker 800XP?

The Hawker 800XP is a twinjet midsize business jet for typically eight passengers. It serves the classic business trip: a comparatively roomy cabin, range for routes across Europe, and a lavatory and baggage compartment on board. Nothing was designed from scratch for it – the 800XP is the consistently developed BAe 125-800, which in turn goes back to the DH.125 Jet Dragon by de Havilland.

The basic idea comes from Hatfield, north of London: starting in 1961, de Havilland developed a small jet there as the successor to the twin-engine de Havilland DH.104 Dove. The prototype flew in 1962, and under the names HS 125 and BAe 125 an entire family emerged over the decades. You can find the early history with all the early series and Viper jet engines on the page on the HS 125 / BAe 125. This page concentrates on the final stages under the Hawker name.

From the BAe 125-800 to the Hawker

The 800 series first flew in 1983. Compared with the 700 series, it got a larger wing and a cockpit with screen displays instead of classic round gauges. Turbofans of the TFE731 series served as engines, today a product of Honeywell Aerospace.

In 1993 British Aerospace sold its business jet operation to Raytheon. From then on the Americans marketed the BAe 125-800 as the Hawker 800 – the name revived the traditional British Hawker brand, which stood above all for military aircraft like the Hawker Hurricane and the Hawker Hunter. You can find the British heir of the old group today under BAE Systems. From 1996, final assembly moved from Broughton near Chester to Wichita, Kansas; the major assemblies continued to come from Britain.

Period	Manufacturer	Designation
1983 to 1993	British Aerospace	BAe 125-800
1993 to 1995	Raytheon	Hawker 800
from 1995	Raytheon	Hawker 800XP, later 800XPi
from 2006	Raytheon / Hawker Beechcraft	Hawker 850XP
until 2013	Hawker Beechcraft	Hawker 900XP and Hawker 750

In 2007 Raytheon’s business jet division passed to new owners as Hawker Beechcraft. The company went bankrupt in 2012, and the successor firm Beechcraft Corporation concentrated on turboprops and ended jet production in 2013. Since 2014 Beechcraft has belonged to Textron Aviation, which no longer builds any Hawkers itself but supports the existing fleet with parts and service.

The versions in detail

All models share fuselage, tail and basic wing. The differences lie in engines, wingtips, cabin and avionics – and those are exactly what matter to you when identifying one.

Hawker 800XP and 800XPi

With the 800XP, Raytheon brought a higher-performance version to market in 1995. It uses TFE731-5BR turbofans and offered more power and higher weights than the original Hawker 800. Commercially it was the big success of the line: between 1995 and 2005 about 475 aircraft were sold. The later 800XPi version brought detail improvements to the cabin and equipment. From the outside you recognize a classic 800XP by the plain wingtips without winglets and the extra tank under the rear fuselage.

Hawker 800SP and 800XP2

These designations don’t stand for new factory models but for retrofitted Hawker 800s and 800XPs. They carry winglets from Aviation Partners, which reduce fuel consumption and improve climb performance. For you that means: winglets alone don’t prove an 850XP.

Hawker 850XP

The 850XP was certified in March 2006. Technically it is an 800XP with factory-fitted winglets, new cabin fittings and modernized avionics. The winglets gave it about 100 nautical miles of additional range. The engines remained the proven TFE731-5BR.

Hawker 900XP

The 900XP builds on the 850XP but uses Honeywell TFE731-50R engines. They mainly improve performance at high temperatures and at high-elevation airports and increase range. The avionics were adapted as well. From the outside the 900XP looks confusingly similar to the 850XP – both carry winglets, both have the same fuselage shape. The 900XP was the last major new edition of the family and was built until the end of production.

Hawker 750

The Hawker 750 is a lighter variant based on the 800XP. Instead of the rear extra tank under the fuselage, there is a heated baggage pod there, so fuel is carried only in the wings. A lighter interior was added as well. The 750 thus sacrificed some range in favor of baggage space and cost. With only about 48 built, it is the rarest member of the line.

Version	Engines	Wingtips	Special feature
800XP / 800XPi	TFE731-5BR	without winglets	Extra tank under the tail
800SP / 800XP2	TFE731-5BR	winglets retrofitted	Conversion of existing aircraft
850XP	TFE731-5BR	winglets from the factory	new cabin, certified 2006
900XP	TFE731-50R	winglets from the factory	more power in heat and at altitude
750	TFE731-5BR	depending on configuration	Baggage pod instead of extra tank

Technology and cabin

At about 15.6 meters long and with a wingspan of a good 15.7 meters without winglets, the Hawker belongs to the middle class of business jets. The maximum takeoff weight is between about 12.4 and 12.7 metric tons depending on the version. In typical seating, eight passengers travel, usually in club seats and a side sofa; it is flown by two pilots.

The wing, in its basic idea, still comes from the de Havilland tradition: it is only slightly swept, manufactured in one piece and set under the fuselage. That makes the Hawker robust and forgiving on shorter runways, but costs some cruise speed compared with more strongly swept competitors. The service ceiling is in the range of about 41,000 to 43,000 feet.

The cabin has long been considered one of its strengths: for its class it is roomy. That is exactly why the Hawker remained popular in charter despite its age – customers get a lot of space for comparatively little money.

How to identify the Hawker in three steps

There are many business jets with rear engines, and in the midsize class especially, some silhouettes resemble each other. These three steps lead you reliably to the Hawker – and to the version.

How to find a specific aircraft live is explained in the article Tracking an aircraft by registration. For British or Swiss registrations, the guides to British G registrations and Swiss HB registrations help.

Hawker, Citation XLS or Challenger 300?

In the midsize segment, the Hawker shares the apron with several similarly sized jets. The finder helps you narrow things down quickly.

Other midsize competitors are the Citation Sovereign, the Learjet 60 and the Embraer Praetor 500. One class above plays the Dassault Falcon 2000. For the big picture of the common families, see Telling business jet types apart.

Military and government use

The 800 series also flies outside business travel. In Japan, the Air Self-Defense Force uses the U-125, based on the BAe 125-800, for flight inspection and the U-125A, based on the Hawker 800 with search radar, for search and rescue missions. In the US, the Air Force used the C-29A, likewise a derivative of the 800 series, to calibrate navigation aids. Around the year 2000, South Korea received reconnaissance versions based on the 800XP.

In Europe such special missions are the exception – here you almost always meet the Hawker in civil hands.

Operators in Europe

As of October 2026, the Hawker 800XP and its siblings are used in Europe mainly by charter operators, corporate flight departments and private owners. There are no fixed schedules; the aircraft fly wherever customers need them. The European Hawkers are registered in various countries, but part of the fleet has also been imported from the US or sold back there.

Because production has been idle since 2013, the fleet is slowly shrinking: older 800XPs are retired, scrapped or sold to other parts of the world. At the same time, modern retrofits – winglets, new avionics, refreshed cabins – keep many aircraft in the market longer. The exact number of active Hawkers in Europe therefore fluctuates constantly.

How rare your sighting actually is can be gauged with the article Judging how rare a sighting is: an 800XP is rather everyday at big business jet airports, while a Hawker 750 is a real catch.

Where to spot the Hawker in Europe

The Hawker lands where business travelers and wealthy vacationers want to go. These airports offer you the best chances:

Location	Chance of a sighting	Why
Geneva	medium to high	Lots of business jet traffic, especially during trade shows and conferences
Paris-Le Bourget	medium to high	One of Europe’s most important business airports
London Luton	medium	Large business jet handling alongside scheduled traffic
Nice	medium, seasonal	Heavy private traffic in summer and during major events
Salzburg	low to medium	Peaks in the winter season and during the festival

In Geneva you get a good overview from the observation deck at Geneva Airport; the plane spotting guide for Geneva tells you the best times. At Zurich Airport, Spectator Terrace B is worthwhile (more in the plane spotting guide for Zurich), and in Austria, during peak winter sports season, the Salzburg observation deck. You can find general tips for hunting private jets in the article Spotting business jets.

Photo tips for the Hawker

A Hawker is not even half as long as an A320. That changes your setup and your composition.

You can calculate when the light suits your spot with the guide Planning the sun position for your photo spot. Planetrack also shows you weather, wind and active runways at the airport, so you know which side the Hawker will come from.

Common mix-ups and how to rule them out

Conclusion

The Hawker 800XP and its successors, the 850XP and 900XP, are the last, mature generation of a design that began over sixty years ago in Hatfield. Robust, roomy and affordable on the used market, they still shape the scene at Europe’s business jet airports today – even though no new Hawker has been built since 2013. For you as a spotter the line is a rewarding target: common enough to find, and with enough versions to keep the collection interesting.