The Tecnam P2012 Traveller is one of those unusual airplanes that when you first see it makes you ask, why did they do that? An 11-seat, fixed-gear unpressurized utility twin powered by a pair of Lycoming piston engines? Who would buy the thing? A rapidly growing U.S. commuter airline that needs exactly this airplane, that’s who.
The development of the P2012 began in 2012 at the request of launch customer Cape Air, the Massachusetts-based island-hopping scheduled air service that flies an aging fleet of Cessna 402s, the care and feeding of which is becoming all but impossible to sustain profitably. In recent years Cape Air has expanded from its bread-and-butter turf in New England south to Florida and the Caribbean, into the Midwest and more recently to the Mid-Atlantic region. As the airline grows, fleet replacement has become a pressing concern.
