Cessna 208 Caravan
1982 utility aircraft family
The Cessna 208 Caravan is a utility aircraft produced by Cessna.
The project was commenced on November 20, 1981, and the prototype first flew on December 9, 1982.
The production model was certified by the FAA in October 1984 and its Cargomaster freighter variant was developed for FedEx.
The 4 ft (1.2 m) longer 208B Super Cargomaster first flew in 1986 and was developed into the passenger 208B Grand Caravan.
The strutted, high wing 208 typically seats nine passengers in its unpressurized cabin, is powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A tractor turboprop and has a fixed tricycle landing gear, floats, or skis.
By 2022, 3,000 had been delivered and 24 million flight hours have been logged. Caravans have been used for flight training, commuter airlines, VIP transport, air cargo, skydiving and humanitarian missions.
Development
On November 20, 1981, the project was given a go-ahead by Cessna for its Pawnee engineering facility. John Berwick, chief engineer at Pawnee, conceived of a single engine, high-wing airplane with a large payload. Berwick had originally approached Vice President Bill Boettger with the idea and once Dwane Wallace approved it, Berwick told Russ Meyer he would design it.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cessna 208 Caravan” as 1982 utility aircraft family. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1982 utility aircraft family. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1056131. The Library of Congress control number is sh2008004111. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1982, 1984 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cessna 208 Caravan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.