cessna 208 grand caravan

Hartford, Conn.� Following the introduction of the Garmin G1000 integrated avionics package and TKS ice protection into all Caravan models, Cessna Aircraft Company, a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company announced today at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) Expo that they received 59 Caravan orders at last week's National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Meeting and Convention.


Incorporation of the Garmin G1000 integrated avionics package will begin in the first half of 2008 on all Caravan models: the Cessna 208, the Grand Caravan (208B) and the Super CargoMaster.


The Garmin G1000 system designed for the Caravan includes three 10" displays � two primary flight displays (PFD) and one multi function display (MFD). One of the PFDs can serve as a back up, increasing dispatch ability. The Caravan G1000 system incorporates the GFC700 � an integrated, dual-channel digital autopilot. Other features include a flight director, go-around mode and Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) which can provide precision guidance to airports where there are currently no precision approaches. It also includes SafeTaxiTM � a graphical representation of the aircraft on the ground in the airport environment in relation to labeled taxiways, runways and buildings during taxi. Radar, TAWS-B, XM radio and XM weather are optional features.


Cessna will offer optional TKS ice protection from Aerospace Systems & Technology, Inc. on cargo pod-equipped Caravans scheduled for delivery during the first half of 2008. The TKS ice protection system releases glycol based fluid through laser-drilled panels on the leading edges of the wings, and horizontal and vertical stabilizers to reduce ice accumulation. A slinger ring on the propeller also emits fluid to minimize ice accumulation on the prop, windshield, cargo pod and landing gear.


Cessna's Caravan orders this year have already reached more than 200% of the goal for 2007, leading to increases in production rates beginning in 2008 that will more than double recent volumes.

Searchers late Monday found the bodies of seven people amid the wreckage of a single-engine plane that crashed in the rugged Cascade range.

The search for three others continued this morning, but it appeared that no one survived the crash, emergency officials said.

The Cessna 208 Grand Caravan was carrying nine Snohomish-based skydivers and a pilot who were returning from a weekend outing in Idaho.

The plane had been reported missing Sunday night on a flight from Star, Idaho, to Shelton, Mason County.

The families of those aboard had been notified, said Jim Hall, director of Yakima Valley Emergency Management. Identities of those aboard had not been officially released.

One of the passengers was Landon Atkin, 20, of Snohomish, according to Rick Mangan, a skydiving instructor with Blue Skies in Bremerton.

Mangan met Atkin earlier this year and worked with him as an instructor for a brief time before the weather went foul in August, he said. "He wanted me to do some coaching with him and teach him some of the techniques of a different style of skydiving," Mangan said. "He's a very nice guy."

Atkin was a "packer" in Snohomish, meaning he packed parachutes, Mangan said. Atkin's family declined to comment.

The plane disappeared from radar screens Sunday night about two-thirds of the way to its destination. The area where the plane was found -- mountainous, heavily wooded terrain near White Pass -- had been the focus of an extensive air and ground search that began Monday morning and stretched into the evening.

The smell of fuel led searchers to the wreckage about 7:40 p.m., but they found only the front section of the plane, the Yakima County Sheriff's Office said. The tail section had been detached and had not been found Monday night.

Officials used the serial number to confirm that it was the skydivers' plane.

Earlier Monday, members of the skydiving community used cellphones, online message boards and social-networking sites such as MySpace to try to determine who was on the plane. Some friends and relatives of those aboard had gathered at a home in Snohomish.


"It's agonizing," said Kandace Harvey, president of Harvey Field, while she waited for word. The Snohomish airport was the nine skydivers' main drop zone.

"We're hoping and praying for a miracle," she said before the wreckage was found. "They're our friends, they're our family. And we all need to know they're OK."

The aircraft is owned by Kapowsin Air Sports in Shelton, said Jessie Farrington, the company's owner. Farrington said she rented the plane to the pilot and skydivers Friday for an event in Idaho. She said the team made a quick jump in Shelton on Friday before heading to Idaho.

The plane was due back at Shelton's Sanderson Field by 7:30 p.m. Sunday. When Farrington and her husband hadn't heard from them by 10:30 p.m., they called authorities.

Farrington described the pilot as experienced in flying skydiving trips.

The plane, a "stretch" version of Cessna's popular Caravan model, has been the subject of directives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada warning against operating in icy conditions. Since 1990, 20 crashes of the plane worldwide have been linked to icing. Problems have resulted from inexperienced pilots trying to fly the craft in poor weather, according to the two agencies.

Overnight temperatures in the White Pass area ranged from the upper 20s to near freezing Sunday night, said meteorologist Allen Kam of the National Weather Service in Seattle. At about 7 p.m. Sunday, wind gusts reached 45 knots and humidity contributed to cloudy conditions, he said.

Yakima County Search and Rescue officials said a hunter reported hearing a small plane with engine trouble about 8 p.m. Sunday and heard what might have been a crash southwest of Rimrock Lake. Using the hunter's account and radar information, air and ground search crews Monday scoured an area southwest of Rimrock Lake.

Searchers had been unable to pick up any emergency distress signal from the aircraft, according to state Department of Transportation officials.

The skydivers were on their way back from a skydiving "boogie" -- a sort of festival, or gathering of skydivers -- near Boise, Mangan said.

Elaine Harvey, co-owner of Skydive Snohomish, said nine of the 10 aboard were either employees of her business or local, licensed skydivers. Skydive Snohomish operates a training school and offers skydiving flights at Harvey Field.

The nighttime return flight to Shelton's Sanderson Field wasn't a jump run, but the skydivers would have had their parachutes nearby in the plane, Mangan said. He and others in the community were holding out hope that some of the skydivers might have parachuted from the plane before it went down.

"If I was on a jump plane that was having engine trouble, rather than risk a landing in the mountains, I would have gotten out of the plane," he said.

It's not unheard-of for skydivers to bail out of a plane before it hits the ground.

On Aug. 21, 1983, nine skydivers and two pilots were killed in the crash of a Lockheed L-18 Learstar near Silvana in Snohomish County. Fifteen skydivers successfully parachuted from the plane before it crashed in a field.

The plane, operated by Landry Aviation, had taken off from the Arlington Airport a short time earlier.

Mike Metcalf, of Kent, was among those who jumped from the plane and survived. He said news of Monday's crash transported him back to the 1983 incident.

"The first thing that went through my mind was a visual of the airplane going upside down in 1983. The first six months after that crash, every night I would wake up with that mental video playing in my mind -- watching it from the time it went over to the time it impacted the ground," he said. "You learn to live with it."

That day, he lost several close friends, bonded by the shared love of skydiving, he said. "We all went through some real tough months and years afterward. We don't think so much about the accident itself but about the friends we lost," he said.

During the day Monday, more than two dozen friends and family members gathered at the White Pass ski area's lodge. Too distraught to talk to reporters, most families requested that questions be handled by Red Cross staff.

"It's not easy for anybody. Even though we're not related to them, you can relate pretty quickly," said Red Cross spokeswoman Stephanie Kinney, whose eyes teared up when she noted that her 18-year-old son is about the same age as many of those believed to be on the plane.

Wanda Craig held a photo of her son Casey, who she told KING-TV was aboard the plane.

Ryan Shipley, 32, was among the skydivers who dropped by Harvey Field looking for news Monday about the crash, which he assumed involved some of his friends.

"It's a tightknit community," said Shipley, of Lake Stevens. "Skydiving is a language not a lot of people speak. If you find someone who speaks that language, it's an instant bond."

Shipley said that under different circumstances he might have been on that plane. "The past five boogies they've gone on, I've probably been on four of them," he said. The Cessna Caravan 208, the model of plane that crashed in the Cascades, has been involved in 52 crashes in the United States since 2000, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The single-engine plane has been a popular choice of companies, adventurers and the military for shuttling large groups on short trips, but federal aviation officials in the U.S. and Canada have documented repeated incidents of pilot trouble while flying the plane in icy conditions.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada have both issued warnings to pilots flying the aircraft to avoid icy conditions, noting that inexperienced pilots have had problems in bad weather. The problem isn't with the plane, according to the FAA, but with pilots' ability to fly the aircraft during icy conditions.

The FAA -- which declined to comment on the plane Monday -- required pilots last year to post warning placards in Cessna Caravan 208 cockpits warning that "continued flight after encountering moderate or greater icing conditions is prohibited." The FAA and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada require Cessna 208 pilots to maneuver out of such conditions.

A Grand Caravan 208 -- the stretch version of the Caravan -- carrying nine Snohomish-based skydivers and a pilot disappeared Sunday while en route from the Boise, Idaho, area to Shelton, Mason County. Wreckage of the plane, built in 1994 and owned by Kapowsin Air Sports of Shelton, was found last night, according to Yakima County Emergency Management.

After the group left a skydiving event, it likely encountered temperatures hovering around freezing with some light rain and heavy clouds in the Cascades, according to the National Weather Service. Snow had fallen in the early evening, but there was no way to measure whether sleet was falling at the Stampede Pass weather station, the Weather Service said.

"I don't know the particulars on this crash, but every airplane has limitations," said Thomas Tilson, director of flight operations for Kenmore Air Express, which flies five Cessna Caravans. "If it was clear conditions, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But with the grade the conditions were [Sunday] I would not have dispatched one of our Caravans across the pass ... "

Tilson said his pilots worked closely with the FAA when the agency investigated the spate of Caravan crashes. He said the FAA discovered that almost all of the crashes were related to "pilot training issues or inexperience in the [weather] conditions."

But, he added, "the government determined last year there was nothing wrong with the aircraft."

Tilson said the FAA now requires all pilots planning to fly a Caravan "into known icing conditions" to pass an online course on such trips. Pilots who don't take it could face punishment by the FAA, Tilson said. He also said all pilots on staff at Kenmore have to take an eight-hour winter-flying course.

Tilson said that many beginning pilots have the illusion that because the Caravan has a single engine it can be flown like any other small plane, but carrying more people and cargo for longer distances. But, he said, many pilots of single-engine planes don't know the basics in flying in winter conditions -- paying attention to ice on the wings before takeoff and reacting to ice buildup on the nose, propellers and wings during the flight.

"The airplane is fine, but pilots may be over their head. This aircraft can get you into conditions that maybe you're not training to be in," Tilson said.


The name of the pilot flying the plane for Skydiving Snohomish and his experience level weren't immediately known Monday.

About 30 people have been killed in accidents involving the Caravan -- including 10 aboard a plane that crashed shortly after taking off from Dillingham, Alaska, in October 2001. The FAA attributed the cause of that crash to "inadequate removal of ice accumulated while the airplane was on the ground."

A spokesman for Cessna told the Winnipeg Sun newspaper in December 2006 that more than 1,700 of the planes are in operation and the aircraft has logged more than 9.5 million flight hours worldwide since 1985.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has determined that Caravans shouldn't fly in anything more than light icing conditions, according to the Sun. That decision stemmed from an October 2005 crash that killed a pilot minutes after takeoff. An investigation found that ice buildup on critical surfaces of the plane kept it from maintaining altitude. Officials are looking for a missing plane with up to 10 passengers that departed from an airport in Boise suburb Star on Sunday evening.

A search for the plane began early Monday in the central Washington Cascades for the Cessna 208 Grand Caravan that was supposed to reach Shelton, Wash., but did not arrive as scheduled.

One of the ten people scheduled to be on the plane, returning from a skydiving trip with Skydive Snohomish, was former Boisean Michelle Barker, 22, a Centennial High School graduate.

According to the Idaho Statesman, Barker was part of a Snohomish-based skydiving club that was making a weekend trip of the sport.

The Associated Press reports that a hunter in the White Pass area informed police he saw a low-flying plane and heard a crash at 8 p.m. Sunday.

And because of that report and the time when the place disappeared off radar, an official at the Washington Department of Transportation, which is conducting the air search, said the searchers are focused on the area southwest of Rimrock Lake, about 30 miles west of Yakima. The Yakima County Search and Rescue is coordinating the ground search in the area.

Cessna's top-of-the-line Caravan lives up to its grand name. Thanks to a Pratt & Whitney PT6A-114A engine and three-blade prop, it carries 100 cubic feet and 500 pounds more useful load than the Caravan 675. For nearly 1,050 statute miles.

And even with all the available seating, the Grand Caravan can change roles quickly by converting to a cargo hauler in less than half an hour, doubling its duty. And your income.