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FARNBOROUGH, England—De Havilland Canada has begun a marketing tour of the “Pack Rat,” a modernized version of the Sherpa twin-turboprop cargo aircraft which was last produced by the former Short Brothers in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
“We have typically named our aircraft after animals, everything from mosquitoes and buffalo to chipmunks,” says Neil Sweeney, vice president corporate affairs for De Havilland Canada, at the Farnborough Airshow. “This is the Pack Rat because it really does act like the pack rat. You can put things in; you can take things off. It is a delightfully quirky aircraft. We think there's lots of life in this airframe,” he adds.
De Havilland Canada heritage company Viking Air acquired the type certificates for the Short Skyvan, 330, 360 and Sherpa in 2019 when Bombardier sold the Shorts facility to the former Spirit AeroSystems, now part of Boeing. If sufficient sales emerge from a coming tour of the Americas, Sweeney says the aircraft would be assembled at its new production facility, De Havilland Field, in Wheaton County east of Calgary, Alberta.
The site is also expected to be the site for final assembly of the Dash 8-400, if production is resumed, as well as for the Twin Otter and DHC-515.
“We asked the market what they were looking for in terms of improvements on the Dash 8-400, also on the Twin Otter 300—the classic 300G. Same with the 515. So, we'll ask the potential customers what they're looking for, and we'll take their lead,” Sweeney says.
“This aircraft fits a niche. It's smaller than a C-295 but it is bigger than a Twin Otter. It has short-takeoff-and-landing [capabilities]. We think of it like a mini [Lockheed C-130] Hercules, so we think this airframe fills a role, but it'll be up to the customers to determine whether we're we are right,” he adds.
The aircraft on display at Farnborough is a modified C-23B+, a hybrid Short 360 derivative created by combining the forward fuselage of the single fin 360 variant with the twin tail and rear loading ramp of the Short Sherpa.
De Havilland Canada has reconfigured the aircraft’s 1980s-era avionics with the Garmin G700 XTi display system, but the Pack Rat is an otherwise standard airframe. Powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6As and equipped with a rear cargo ramp, the Sherpa has a range of 195 nm with a maximum payload of 7,000 lb. “At this point I think we will probably stick with the PT6As. If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” Sweeney says.
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