Kenya and Tanzania have many small airstrips scattered around the countryside including in the national parks.  These provide quick transfers between locations if you are willing or able to pay and don’t want the long and bumpy road trips.  There are a variety of types that are used for these services and I shall show some others in upcoming posts.  However, one type does dominate.

The Cessna Grand Caravan is everywhere in the region.  It has the right size for many of the trips, it has sufficient capacity for luggage with the baggage pod beneath he fuselage, it is fine with the rough surface strips that are in most places and it is PT-6 powered so very reliable.  We saw tons of them during the trip and also got to experience a flight on one.  I was surprised to find it was a 1×2 configuration.  I had assumed that they were 1×1 but not in this case.  It got a lot of us in there but getting in and out was not an easy process.  The aisle was minimal!

I have no idea how many Grand Caravans there are in use in rural Africa but I imagine that Cessna has delivered a ton of aircraft from Wichita to the region.  I suspect that the best replacement is another Caravan.  The Islander might once have been this sort of workhorse but the efficiency and reliability of the Caravan must be what has made it so ubiquitous.