Ikhana Aircraft Services has kicked off a new program at the French Valley Airport (F70) in Murrieta, California, that focuses on a complete refurbishment of the de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter. Named the Ikhana Twin Otter X2, the program strips the aging airframes and brings them a new life with a life limit of 66,000 hours or 132,000 flight cycles.
“The key to the Ikhana Twin Otter X2 is the combination of our STC’d RWMI DHC-6 re-life fuselage with our RWMI re-life wing box to create value from an operator’s unusable timed-out asset,” said John Zublin, president and CEO of Ikhana.
In addition to the X2 fuselage and wing box package, the Twin Otters are delivered with new paint, interior, avionics, engines, propellers and other systems, based on the customers’ specifications. And with the Twin Otter’s varied use, from skydiving to bush flying to commercial transport, the configurations that will emerge will likely be very different.
Ikhana plans to deliver three Twin Otter X2 airplanes next year. In addition to providing the X2 program, Ikhana is a factory endorsed service center for Sidney, British Columbia-based Viking Air, which received a production certificate from Transport Canada for the Twin Otter last year.
