Fifty years after the first Pilatus Porter made the long journey from Switzerland to Nepal, the rugged single-engine aircraft is staging a comeback in the Himalaya. By a happy coincidence, that first aircraft was nicknamed ‘Yeti’, and it is Yeti Airlines that has just taken delivery of two brand new latest model Pilatus Porters to re-open roadless areas of the country. “The Pilatus Porter has a proven record of performance for flying to remote areas of Nepal, it has shown it can do the job anytime and almost anywhere,” says Yeti’s Ang Tshiring Sherpa, “it fits nicely between a helicopter and a Twin Otter and we want to use it to open up the far west.” Yeti Airlines, which flies to more destinations than any other airline in Nepal, bought the two Pilatus Porter PC-6s to extend its reach to airfields which can’t take Twin Otters.
In the past 50 years, Pilatus Porters have been flown by the United Nations, the Swiss development agency and Royal Nepal Airlines. In those years, PC-6 have done just about everything: they have dropped live goats by parachute for mountaineering expeditions, carried text books and vaccines to remote villages in western Nepal, ferried grain to Humla during the 1982 food crisis, flown orange saplings for orchards in Jumla and taken international celebrities for new year parties at Syangboche.
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