The 300th Kodiak single-engine utility turboprop has been delivered, according to an announcement from Daher on Wednesday. Originally designed and built by Quest Aircraft Company, the Kodiak 100 received its FAA type certificate in 2007. Quest introduced the Kodiak 100 Series II upgrade in 2018 and, after the company was acquired by Daher, the Series III version was unveiled in March 2021.
“This milestone delivery comes as the Kodiak program is on the rise following its acquisition by Daher in 2019,” said Mark Brown, Kodiak sales and marketing director. “Having been with Kodiak for eight years, the improvements made since 2019 in terms of manufacturing enhancements, production efficiencies and the product support integration is remarkable.”
The Kodiak 100 Series III offers a maximum cruise speed of 174 knots, 1,132-NM range and useful load of 3,530 pounds. In addition to being float-ready, it features a Garmin G1000 NXi flight deck, GFC 700 autopilot, SurfaceWatch runway monitoring technology, Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT) and optional GWX 75 Doppler-capable weather radar. Daher reports that the Kodiak fleet has currently logged more than 278,700 flight hours.
It’s great to see the Kodiak make the milestone in a segment dominated by the Caravan – kudos
Good news.
I love this airplane.
I sometimes see one on amphibs at a backcountry strip called Cavanaugh Bay, ID on Priest lake. One of my favorite airplanes. I also like the Caravan.
Congratulations to the fine people who designed, manufactured, and continuously improved this great aircraft. You have much to be proud of.
And congratulations to the people at Dahar for their courage and insight to acquire this company and launch it into a trajectory that will continue it’s mission of rugged service to others.
Congratulations to a fine team who develop, build and support a superb product series! What a great milestone.
So a useful airplane and good product support sell?
Who’d a thunk o that? ;-o)
(Note that so far sales rate has not increased since Daher purchased the company in 2019 – about 25 per year according to Wikipedia.
Better production – lower cost – and wider product support should help but it is probably early yet. Albeit there may have been factory constraints, it was enlarged in 2016, hopefully Daher will improve output (faster production can substitute for larger facility, in theory).