I don't know...
The old girl has a certain charm, all right, but it sure isn't as safe as more modern aircraft. Lose one engine at the wrong time on take-off and if you are a pilot of average skill then you are probably going to have an accident, where the same thing in most modern aircraft is just a non-event. You "sky-gods" will find this just doesn't apply, of course, since you all have mega-thousands of accident-free hours and could probably fly the box the DC-3 was delivered in but I am speaking here of some guy who would be adequately safe in something built to keep him that way, not this antique with all of its ways to catch one out. As you guys hang up your headsets, what are we to do with this airplane if it calls for exceptional skills? (By that I mean simply, "exceptional by modern training standards.")
Someone here mentioned that the Dutch fly a DC-3. Well, I believe the Dutch Dakota Association lost one in an accident with some loss of life, when that is just the sort of thing to get the legislators excited.
If you cannot answer the stupid question, "Does this airplane meet the most modern safety standards?" with a "Yes," then the first instinct of the burocrats is to ground it. Even the partisans of the type know that the DC-3 was certified to standards that have been long superceded. That many more modern aircraft also have this problem, well, there are over-riding commercial reasons not to ground them that are absent in the case of the DC-3!
It used to be conventional wisdom that the -3 was unbustable, built in a time when everything was made twice as thick as necessary. Then one lost a wing in flight operating in an area of CBs. Oops!
I think we shall see the type go the way of the Curtiss Condor, sad to say. Get John Travolta to trade in that creaky old 707 for a Dak. That might be one way forward. Anyone else remember the Bagwash's private airline that served Rajneeshpuram (formerly Antelope), Oregon?
There were enough built that it shall never pass entirely from the scene, even if most end up as museum pieces or roadside taco stands.
I enjoyed my time in the type, window slid back, engines rumbling gently as this or that small island slid past on the way to Georgetown with a fresh load of rich German suckers on a freebie to look at a dream real-estate development. "Dream" in the sense that some scratches made with a D-8 out in the bush translated into a tropical paradise one should pay good money for. The free trip in the DC-3 was probably the best part of the whole deal.