Forgive my ignorance as this isn't my area, but I've read comments before to the effect that when operating a relatively large number of very short sectors in a day, the cycle-based maintenance requirements of a turboprop tend to disadvantage it compared with a piston engine. Is there any truth in this?
Years ago Aurigny tried to replace the Trislanders with Twotters and it was exactly this which had them reverse the policy: the high cycle nature of the operation caned the PT6 and pushed costs up because on-wing time fell. The old 0540s on the Trislander may be noisy etc but their Shop Visit costs are a fraction of those of the PT6. It could be that the PT6 is more robust these days but I doubt that the situation has changed that much.
I thought AeroNormandy Engineering had bought the type certificate for the Trislander with a view to building new replacements in/with China. Whatever happened to that plan?