Ameriflight 208

I was only there a couple years ago, but like someone else said, several people pretty high up in the company were DEAD SET against caravans. Dangerous airplanes in ice and will kill pilots or something along those lines. Having quite a bit of caravan time I don't really buy it, but I would be VERY surprised to see caravans at Amflight...
 
Dan208B said:
I was only there a couple years ago, but like someone else said, several people pretty high up in the company were DEAD SET against caravans. Dangerous airplanes in ice and will kill pilots or something along those lines. Having quite a bit of caravan time I don't really buy it, but I would be VERY surprised to see caravans at Amflight...
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If they were really that terrible in ice, you wouldn't see them all over the north. They're not the best in high elevation and ice... where the mea is 12k+, but you don't see them there.
Regardless, a caravan offers nothing other than a larger paycheck on the purple side. You go to amflight for multi turbine, and without that i don't know what the draw would be.
 
z987k said:
If they were really that terrible in ice, you wouldn't see them all over the north. They're not the best in high elevation and ice... where the mea is 12k+, but you don't see them there.
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The 208 isn't the best plane in ice, but neither is it the death trap that some people think it is.

The boots do their job. Which is to buy you time to get out of the ice, nothing more nothing less. If you camp out in ice in any prop airplane you are asking for trouble. Don't take the 208 into any conditions you wouldn't take a Chieftian, and you'll be fine.

The 208 is a great airplane for beginer freight dogs. It is very simple to operate, and will let a new guy learn to fly in the weather in an airplane that is familiar. After some time in the Caravan, then he will be ready for the 99 or 1900.
 
USMCmech said:
The 208 isn't the best plane in ice, but neither is it the death trap that some people think it is.

The boots do their job. Which is to buy you time to get out of the ice, nothing more nothing less. If you camp out in ice in any prop airplane you are asking for trouble. Don't take the 208 into any conditions you wouldn't take a Chieftian, and you'll be fine.

The 208 is a great airplane for beginer freight dogs. It is very simple to operate, and will let a new guy learn to fly in the weather in an airplane that is familiar. After some time in the Caravan, then he will be ready for the 99 or 1900.
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You can take a pa31 to hell and back in ice. It's like the damn honey badger. Doesn't give a • about the 3" sitting on the wings.
 
Landed once at ABQ in my PA-31 way back in the day. Pulling into the chocks, the marshaller ducks down in front of the nose as Im shutting the engines down, and comes back up holding a 4 inch or so thick piece of ice shaped in the form of a bowl that was adhered to the nosecone. Smaller amounts of ice covered the wings aft of the boots, and the empennage. Plane didn't handle any different on the way in, IMC in rain and freezing rain the whole way. One tough bird.
 
Mike, did it look similar to this? ;)

nl4y13.jpg
 
TallFlyer said:
Someone over here told me that UPS simply doesn't want its freight flown in singles.
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UPS wants it's freight flown by the lowest bidder that can reliably complete the run.

A 208 can carry as much volume as a 99 for less cost than the Chieftian. The caravan is only 15kts slower than the 99 (about 5 minutes on the average leg). It's kinda hard to ignore that amount of savings.
 
Maybe a 99 with a pod? I saw 210 in the straight 1967 99 with the -20s. More like 230 in the A99 (I think it was?) with the big engines (-27s I want to say...). And even without the pod you would bulk out a 208 before a 99 (it was pretty close, to be fair).
 
Nothing more fun than having a caravan throw a wrench into an operation. I had a few night going into DFW where AMF was lined up and all of a sudden Martinair calls up having gotten direct to some fix ahead of us. As a result you just hear "AMFLIGH XXXX fly heading 170 for spacing" to about 3 or so planes.

The speed difference can be huge between a 208 and 99. The 99 is definitely the best on the 200nm+ trips. I have had races with some Baron 208s and would win by 10 minutes a least. If there is any weather a 208 would easily miss the jet on the run I was doing.
 
I hate the flying roadblock, but I hate the 99 even more. What a hateful machine. Except, of course, that while it was incredibly irritating in every possible way, it never tried to kill me, not once. Ok, they can be equally awful.
 
Maurus said:
The speed difference can be huge between a 208 and 99. The 99 is definitely the best on the 200nm+ trips. I have had races with some Baron 208s and would win by 10 minutes a least.
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I don't doubt that, but for legs less than 200nm the Caravan is only 3-5 minutes slower for significantly less cost. The guys driving the Ameriflight 99s at DFW said they only got 160-165 KIAS out of theirs for the short legs they flew vs about 145-150 in the 208. I assume that the 99 has a much better speed advantage up high. When we covered for the 99 on the shorter runs out of DFW there wasn't any real difference in time.

We would routinely fly DFW-Midland when the Ameriflight planes were maxed out. Provided that the slower 208 was loaded first and launched while the speedier twins were being loaded, everybody arrived at about the same time.

Unless there are some stretched 99s I haven't seen, there is not much difference in volume between the 99 and the 208. The 208 is much easier to load compared to the 99. The 99 can handle a bit more weight, but bulking out is far more common.
 
If they're only getting 165kts, they're at quite the low power setting(which may be, because holy crap are a lot of those runs short). I was looking at the run that I back up in the pa31, and it's filed for 210kts.
 
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