I am surely not happy or excited about never having gotten to say proper goodbye to my baby. She is a Cessna 208 Caravan/Cargomaster. The reason why they chose to decommission it is because it was an odd-ball short-bus Caravan (kind of like its pilot of the last eight yrs). It was pretty much a one of a kind in our fleet --the first generation of the Caravan's that Cessna still produces. There was no really pressing reason to retire it as far as I could see. As best I know it (maybe not all that well) the parts procurement should not have been that much of an issue. Probably just some desk lacky somewhere didn't want to have to keep accounting for some "**" airplane that was slightly different then the rest.
I am kinda pissed about it. Me and her got along very well. Now I gotta fly the C-208B that is no where near as agile of an airplane as my baby. It fishes around in the sky. My baby held a nice solid line in the sky and outperformed the other every day of the week.
