Quest Aircraft Company of Sandpoint, Idaho, on Wednesday announced that its Kodiak, a 10-place single-engine turboprop utility airplane, received type certification from the FAA. The rugged all-aluminum airplane is designed for use on short and unimproved runways and is float-capable to optimize its usefulness for backcountry operators. According to Quest, the Kodiak can take off in less than 700 feet with a useful load of 3,450 pounds and climb at more than 1,700 feet per minute. The Garmin G1000 integrated avionics suite is standard equipment on the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6-powered airplane. “The Kodiak was designed with and for mission and humanitarian aviation organizations to perform under extremely rigorous conditions in the most remote regions of the world, so the bar was set high,” said Quest Aircraft President and CEO Paul Schaller. “During both Quest’s and the FAA’s testing, we pushed the envelope and are pleased that the airplane successfully achieved the desired performance.” The prototype has logged more than 1,000 hours of flight time and S/N 001, the first fully conforming production aircraft, has flown several hundred hours since entering the flight-test program. S/N 002, the first aircraft to be delivered to a customer, is currently on the production line and the company said it has a three-year backlog of orders in hand, though deliveries may come sooner as production ramps up. The airplane will be on display next week at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis.
