NEW YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - Aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft said it has elected to pay in kind the interest due on its bonds as a way of maintaining cash.

The company said it will pay the interest on its 8.875 percent bonds due 2015 for the period ending Oct. 1 with new notes carrying a coupon of 9.625 percent.

The company said it took the action "as a prudent method to enhance liquidity in the second half of the year."

Pay-in-kind options are issuer-friendly features that underwriters offered to debt sellers during the nearly decade-long leveraged buyout boom that popped in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007.

PIK features give issuers the option to preserve cash by paying bond coupon interest with more, higher yielding bonds.

PIK options generally are only available for a certain period of time during a bond's maturity.

In March of 2007, Hawker sold $1.1 billion of bonds to back it's $3.3 billion leveraged buyout, in which Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Onex Partners acquired the aircraft manufacturing assets of Raytheon Aircraft Co. and renamed it Hawker Beechcraft (STN.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Earlier this month, spanish-language broadcaster Univision Communications Inc, which also sold PIK bonds to back its $12 billion leveraged buyout in early 2007, chose to pay in kind the interest due on its $1.5 billion of 9.75 percent bonds due 2015.

Los Angeles-based Univision said it intends to use its PIK option for each interest period going forward. Univision's PIK bonds will pay a 10.5 percent coupon.