ANGLO NORMANDY Aero-engineering has put the Britten Norman Trislander back into limited production, 14 years after the last airframe was built by the UK aviation company.
The Guernsey, Channel Islands-based Anglo Normandy received two Trislander kits late in 1995 from the USA where they have been kept in store since production of the Trislander stopped.
The company, a specialist in the maintenance of PBN Islanders and Trislanders, expects to have the first aircraft flying in March.
The first of the two 18-seat Trislanders to be completed is destined for sister company Aurigny Air Services, which already flies a fleet of nine similar aircraft on routes between the Channel Islands, the southern UK and to France. The second has been sold to an unnamed customer.
The kits are part of a batch of incomplete aircraft shipped by Pilatus Britten-Norman from the UK to International Aircraft of Lantana in Florida in the early 1980s for licence production under the name of the Tri-Commutair. The scheme foundered after the first three aircraft were assembled, and the airframe kits have been sitting in a hangar ever since.
Anglo Normandy says, that further kits will be assembled, if they can gain any firm orders for the three-engine aircraft.
Source: Flight International
