The aircraft had been disassembled and shipped in 2008 to Victoria, British Columbia (Canada), where Viking Air was to perform “inspection and overhaul, major ‘D’ check, installation of Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-27 engines and Hartzell 3 blade props, complete paint, flight testing and certification to return the aircraft to service”, as specified in a September 2008 company press release.
Completion of work on T-85 is expected to be followed by up to six additional Twin Otters entering Viking Air conversion, though actual work will purportedly be carried out by Quilmes Material Area in Argentina. Avionics improvements have also been incorporated into this particular airframe, most likely imitating those installed on sister ship T-86 during refurbishment by Texas Air Services in 2008.
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Notice that enhancing these aircraft with PT6A-27 engines and modern avionics gets them into the so-called DHC-6-350 variant of the Twin Otter, somewhere between the -300 Series built by de Havilland Canada until 1998 and the -400 currently under development by Viking Air.
Horacio Clariá, D. Kopac, Martín Kubo, Guillermo Landa and Gustavo Lepez contributed to this report, initially published in Aeromilitaria Argentina.
