Cape Air Will Replace Its Twin-Engine Tecnams With Single-Engine Cessna Caravans in Montana

Cape Air will start flying Cessna Grand Caravan EX turboprops in eastern Montana in 2027, replacing the Tecnam P2012 Travellers that serve five small towns from Billings, the airline announced on September 10, 2026. It expects to finish the switch by the end of 2027.

The Grand Caravan EX aircraft will carry a belly cargo pod, which Cape Air says adds significant baggage and storage capacity. The routes link Billings Logan International Airport with Havre, Glasgow, Glendive, Sidney and Wolf Point, towns Cape Air has served since 2013.

Cape Air’s release does not say how many aircraft it is taking. FlightGlobal reported that the airline will acquire eight. The Tecnams will keep flying the routes until the changeover.

“The high-wing, single-engine turboprop is a natural fit for Cape Air’s mission,” said Chris Crow, vice president of piston and utility aircraft sales at Textron Aviation, which builds the Caravan.

A single engine needs a federal waiver

The engine count is the interesting part. These are Essential Air Service routes, subsidized by the Department of Transportation, and federal law defines basic EAS as service in aircraft with at least two engines and two pilots.

The Tecnam P2012 meets that rule with two 375-horsepower piston engines. The Caravan has one, an 867-shaft-horsepower Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-140 turboprop.

Cape Air planned for this three years ago. When it bid to keep the Montana routes, its proposal promised a “good faith effort to transition to a Cessna Caravan fleet in Montana” if the communities asked for it, according to DOT Order 2023-8-13.

All five towns requested a waiver of the two-engine rule in June 2023, and DOT granted it for January 1, 2024, through December 31, 2027. That matches the term of Cape Air’s current contract, and it ends the same month the Caravan changeover is due to be complete.

Keeping Caravans on these routes after 2027 would need the next EAS award to carry a waiver of its own.

The subsidy is large because the towns are remote. Each sits more than 210 miles from the nearest large or medium hub airport, which exempts them from the program’s per-passenger subsidy cap.

DOT’s order sets the combined subsidy for the five at about $17.3 million in 2024, rising to about $20.1 million in 2027. That buys 14 weekly round trips to Billings from each town and 35 from Sidney.

Why the Tecnam plan stalled

The P2012 was built around Cape Air. The airline approached Tecnam in 2009 looking for a successor to its aging Cessna 402s, became the launch customer, and signed a 2015 deal for roughly 100 aircraft.

It took 30, and deliveries stopped at the end of 2021, Aviation Pros reported in July. Fifteen are based in the Northeast, with the rest in Montana and the Caribbean.

A former Cape Air pilot told the publication that the Tecnams needed significant engine work almost weekly. Tecnam said the early entry-into-service problems had been addressed together with the airline.

That left much of the fleet flying old Cessnas, which Aviation Pros counted at 63 aircraft built between 1967 and 1985. Cape Air also lost its planned electric option when Eviation paused development of the Alice, on which it held 75 orders, and got its deposit back.

Cape Air flies 97 aircraft on more than 300 daily flights and carries about 400,000 passengers a year, according to the airline. The Caravan is new to that fleet, and eastern Montana is the only place Cape Air has said it will fly it.