At the Boeing Plaza at the center of the EAA AirVenture showgrounds on Monday, July 26—the first day of the show—Textron Aviation debuted the Cessna 408 SkyCourier, the company’s high-wing, twin turboprop utility airplane. If you want to see the airplane, you need to rush over to Boeing Plaza. The SkyCourier will return to the Textron Aviation headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, on Tuesday after participating in the afternoon flyover events.
FedEx approached Textron Aviation in 2017 to design a purpose-built cargo airplane to serve as a feeder aircraft for smaller airports. “We really appreciate everything that the Textron team has done in working with our design and engineering teams at FedEx to provide exactly what we need—a state of the art feeder aircraft that allows us to serve our customers with more product options,” said Bill West, vice president of supplemental air ops at FedEx. With rugged landing gear, the airplane can utilize unimproved airports with runways as short as 3,300 feet at max takeoff weight, said Textron Aviation flight test pilot Todd Dafforn.
