As the Paris Air Show got under way Monday, I had my own little Parisian soiree planned for some of us who, sniff, couldn’t be at the show.
Since I’m monitoring it from my desk here in Wichita, I had a small gathering at Oeno with some French wine, a jaunty beret that we passed around and party favors from the Aviator’s Attic at Yingling.
Well, just as it was pouring at the Paris Air Show, so too did it storm in Wichita. We hear that put a bit of a damper on the fun in Paris, but it didn’t stop our small band of merrymakers in Old Town — even when Oeno ran out of its $5 Monday-night special French wine.
Turns out California grapes do nicely in a pinch.
Cessna Aircraft received an order for 30 Grand Caravan turboprops from Indonesia’s Susi Air and an order for 46 182 Turbo Skylanes from the Turkish SSM (Undersecretariat for Defence Industries of the Ministry of National Defence).
Cessna will deliver eight Caravans to Susi Air in 2009 and the remainder by the end of 2011, the company said. Susi Air began operations in 2006 with two Caravans. The company provides scheduled and charter passenger and cargo service throughout Indonesia and humanitarian airlift support.
The 182 Skylanes will be used by the Turkish Land Forces and will replace its existing fleet of Cessna T41s. The T41 is the military designation for a variant of the Cessna 172 Skyhawk.
