Aircraft of Papua

Aside from the Pilatus Porter, there are plenty of other bush aircraft flying around the skies out here in Papua of all shapes and sizes. Each type offers advantages and disadvantages over another type but together they supply the main form of infrastructure for the area.

Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter departing Mulia, Papua

By far the most popular aircraft in Papua is the Cessna C208 Grand Caravan. The company I work for has the largest fleet of them in Indonesia and it’s not hard to see why they’re so popular, offering reasonable STOL characteristics with good payload capabilities and a decent enough combination of speed and range.

Cessna C208 Grand Caravan departing Oksibil, Papua

Following on from Cessna, De Havilland hold the next most popular position with three of their aircraft types routinely flown throughout Papua. The Twin Otter is pretty popular along with a few Dash-7s and even a solitary Caribou can occasionally be seen cruising into strips a Caravan can only just get into; a truly impressive sight watching such a large aircraft land in a 600m airstrip at 7500ft.

De Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter departing Ilaga, Papua

De Havilland DHC-4 Caribou in Oksibil, Papua

De Havilland DHC-7 Dash-7 landing in Oksibil, Papua

There’s even a few jets buzzing about into the larger airports. BAe-146s are routinely flown between Sentani and Wamena; their four engines offering good performance at high altitude airports like Wamena.

BAe-146 landing in Wamena, Papua

The Indonesian army also does a reasonable amount of flying out in Papua, either on exercises or helping deliver supplies to the larger airports like Wamena.

Lockheed C-130 Hercules in Timika, Papua

Of course a special mention has to be made for the other type of Pilatus regularly seen flying at FL250 over the mountains before dropping into Mulia airstrip.

Pilatus PC-12 in Nabire, Papua

There’s plenty of other types flown out here that I don’t have photos of but once I do, I’ll post up another article on them all.