Reminds me of Short Bros. Skyvan, but with a ramp-friendly tail. I recall a photo of a VW Microbus inside a Skyvan.

I have lots of skydives from a Shorts Skyvan. Great platform for that.

This is the Ayres Loadmaster 2.0. Fedex has been wanting a Caravan type aircraft capable of hauling their containers for years. Ayres built a huge aircraft that looked like a giant Caravan and had two PT6 engines running through a gearbox into a single prop but there were tons of problems, both with the gearbox and the airframe. I saw the prototype in Albany about 15 years ago when it was undergoing airframe vibration analysis. Apparently, it didn't pass.

Eventually Fedex tired of throwing good money after bad and the project was scrapped.

Ugly , but way cool.

Ayres Loadmaster 2.0 pictures. Man, that's a fugly airplane!

Powering it with a twin gas turbine engine and transmission adapted from a helicopter is just nuts. I can't even imagine why anyone would go down that route, when there's really no reason to just hang two engines on the wings.

Not sure myself either, although mechanically it works fine in helicopters. You don't have the maintain control/VMC problems when one rolls back (but you can still pull off the "good" engine by mistake, and identifying the "bad" engine is not always straightforward, especially if the computers are having crosstalk problems).


Yeah, not sure why they put so much R&D into an unconventional two-engines-into-one concept. Obviously they thought it was a good bet.

There might have been some cycle time advantage to feathering the prop while loading/offloading cargo. The prop is that much farther away from the cargo door than wing mounted engines. You can see how a truck fits easily under the wing- no struts or anything else close to the cargo door access. How many hangar rash "events" would that save over 10-20 years, and how many seconds and minutes could the company shave (safely) by not having to work extra slow when maneuvering ground vehicles up to the cargo door? Time is money...

On the other hand, aviation history has just a handful of similar attempts, mostly obscure and never wild successes:








Picture credits: Wikipedia

The new Skycourier sim is about ready in ICT. We should get the first aircraft by the end of the year. Be a while before they show up on the line though. Max take off weight is around 18000 lbs.

Any online references to the tons of problems for the Ayres Loadmaster?

The reason that this has been tried is to obtain (most) of the redundancy benefits of a twin without the VMC issue and nacelle drag of a conventional twin. Also there are, or were, advantages in Part 135 IFR operations if it qualifies as a twin.

The main disadvantage is that the FAA has imposed pretty strict special conditions (on Learfan and Soloy twin Caravan) regarding power transmission reliability. I don't know if those would qualify it as a "real" twin for Part 135.

Not really a helicopter gearbox either, when you start considering prop loads. Prop control system is also a reliability/redundancy issue.

Any online references to the tons of problems for the Ayres Loadmaster?

The reason that this has been tried is to obtain (most) of the redundancy benefits of a twin without the VMC issue and nacelle drag of a conventional twin. Also there are, or were, advantages in Part 135 IFR operations if it qualifies as a twin.

The main disadvantage is that the FAA has imposed pretty strict special conditions (on Learfan and Soloy twin Caravan) regarding power transmission reliability. I don't know if those would qualify it as a "real" twin for Part 135.

Not really a helicopter gearbox either, when you start considering prop loads. Prop control system is also a reliability/redundancy issue.