Thanks for the replies,
I guess the reason for the Twin Otter over the B1900 or Metro was that it may kill two birds with the one stone. As another of my threads suggests we are looking at replacing/upgrading from a C310/PA31 fleet. This is for several reasons, one being our clients are increasing their workforces and their workforces are getting heavier. The average miner is now about 90-100 kg without luggage or tools so the current fleet is getting very weight limited. Hence the need for a 15-20 seat aircraft. Over 200nm could you realistically put 19 people in an Otter? The second bird was an other client that may be increasing pax numbers into a location with a 650m strip, unfortunately this cann't be changed due to topography. Its currently serviced by Airvans so doing one load in one plane would be better then several loads.
We'll be getting proffesional advice before making the decision as it is a fairly big step. So I cann't provide exact details on the type, engines, etc other then to say if we went with the otter it would be a 300 series.
One of the main points of my post was to draw on any personal experiences flying these types. If pilots had a choice between Otter, B1900, Metro, King Air what would they choose? What personal opinion do people have on the flying characteristics, noise, pax comfort, etc on the Otter. Is it the payload machine that people make it out to be or only over really short flights?
The problem we have is the old single v's twin debate that so many customers seem to have. A Caravan would be good (theres a few cheap ones about at the moment) but we might go down the twin path instead. Does anyone have any experience operating both C208 and Otter? If so how do they compare on costs per hour?
Thanks again for the replies.
Goat Rider.