Originally Posted by
atakacs
Interesting. Is there an economic sense to do so when speaking TCO ? It must be quite expensive to maintain those airframes in fly worthy conditions - I'm pretty sure a more modern design could deliver the same services with both lower costs and increased security...
One of the things that has kept these old Dak's flying in remote areas of South America, is that they can easily land and take off on very rough dirt airstrips. It's like the largest "bush plane" out there. As long as there are spare parts and local mechanics to work on them, it's not easy to replace the amount of cargo and pax they can haul in and out of these remote unpaved airstrips in a single flight.