De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter
1965 utility aircraft family
The de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is a Canadian STOL (short takeoff and landing) utility aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada in the mid-1960s and still in production. It was built by De Havilland Canada from 1965 to 1988. In 2006, Viking Air purchased the type certificate and restarted production in 2008, before re-adopting the name De Havilland Canada. In 2023, DHC started production of the 300-G, an upgraded version of the Series 400 with Garmin avionics.
The aircraft's fixed tricycle undercarriage, STOL capabilities, twin turboprop engines and high rate of climb have made it a successful commuter airliner, typically seating 18–20 passengers, as well as a cargo and medical evacuation aircraft. The Twin Otter has also been popular with commercial skydiving operations and is used by the United States Army Parachute Team and the 98th Flying Training Squadron of the United States Air Force.
Design and development
Development of the aircraft began in 1964, with the first flight on 20 May 1965. A twin-engine replacement for the single-engine DHC-3 Otter retaining the DHC-3's STOL qualities, its design features included double-slotted trailing-edge flaps and ailerons that work in unison with the flaps to boost STOL performance. The availability of the 550 shaft horsepower (410 kW) Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-20 turboprop in the early 1960s made the concept of a twin feasible. A DHC-3 Otter with its piston engine replaced with two PT6A-4 engines had already flown in 1963.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter” is 1965 utility aircraft family. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Havilland, Canada and DHC-6, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q683041. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1988, 2006 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter” 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.