There was no way we were going to get in: too high, too fast and too close to the runway. I thought this was a go-around for sure.
Charles Gunter had other ideas. He pushed the prop levers forward to full fine, ran out the flaps and closed the throttle. With the big twin shuddering under the sudden increase in drag, he pitched the aircraft to about 20 degrees nose down. The altimeter went into reverse and the VSI flirted with the bottom stop.
I watched the ASI all the way, but it hardly twitched, registering minimal increase in air speed as we plunged towards the ground.
When Gunter was happier with the picture out the windscreen, he hauled back on the stick, bled off the excess speed and deftly kissed the runway with the wheels. It would have been an impressive landing in an energetic little aerobat, but he had pulled it off in an 11-seat piston twin.
A Traveller cometh
Since the early 1960s, our charter heroes have been Piper’s workhorse PA-31 Chieftains and Navajos, and Cessna’s sleek and speedy 400 series. Big piston twins all, they have earned their keep on relentless charter and short-haul RPT operations for decades.
As they aged, they should have been replaced, and most likely would have if a viable alternative had ever been put on the table.
Now that alternative is here in the form of Tecnam’s P2012 Traveller, an aircraft specifically designed to allow operators to retire their legacy twins.
The demonstrator, VH-VNV, arrived in the country in early July 2022 after a marathon 79-hour ferry flight from Tecnam’s home at Capua near Naples in Italy.
"The P2012 is the first clean-sheet design, high-wing twin to be certified in recent times," said Michael Loccisano, head of local agent Hallmarc Aviation. "Tecnam has specifically designed this aircraft with a customer of [Massachusetts airline] Cape Air in mind. Cape Air searched the world looking for a manufacturer that was prepared to design a brand new aeroplane from the ground up to replace the ageing twins like Chieftains, Navajos, Cessna 400 series aircraft, and when others said it was too hard
