Representative imageSingle-engine utility turboprop
The Grand Caravan EX is the world's default utility turboprop: a fixed-gear, strut-braced single that hauls up to fourteen occupants or a tonne-plus of cargo out of dirt strips, and does it day after day for decades. The EX's PT6A-140 fixed the type's one complaint — climb performance when heavy and hot.
From safari shuttles to skydiving, freight, medevac and scheduled island-hopping, the Caravan is usually the aircraft actually doing the work.
The aircraft
Cessna designed the 208 in the early 1980s to replace the ageing piston bush fleet — the Beavers and Otters then doing the world's rough-strip work on wartime-era airframes. The recipe was radical only in its restraint: a big, simple, fixed-gear single around the PT6A turbine, built to be loaded through a large cargo door and maintained anywhere. The prototype flew on 9 December 1982, certification came in October 1984, and deliveries began the following year.
Federal Express then shaped the aircraft more than any other customer, commissioning the windowless 208A Cargomaster and, in 1986, the stretched 208B Super Cargomaster. That stretch became the passenger Grand Caravan in 1990 — and the definitive Caravan thereafter. The family passed its 3,000th delivery in 2023, a fleet spread across freight feeders, island-hoppers, skydiving operations, medevac services and, above all, the safari and bush-charter economies of Africa, where the type is simply infrastructure.
The Grand Caravan EX, certified in December 2012, answered the one complaint the fleet had earned: climb performance when heavy, hot and high. The 867 shp PT6A-140 improved rate of climb by roughly a third over the previous engine — a transformation on a 40-degree afternoon at a highveld strip, which is precisely where much of the fleet earns its living. The EX is the version modern African operators specify, and the used market prices that preference in.
Key figures
Standard published figures for a typically equipped Cessna Grand Caravan EX. Individual airframes vary with configuration and modification — the specification on a listing is what governs.
We do not hold a Cessna Grand Caravan EX on the books this week, but we place the type regularly. Tell us the specification, hours and budget, and we will come back with airframes that are genuinely available.
Ask us to source a Grand Caravan EXWhere it reaches
Click the map to move the origin to your base and see how far the Grand Caravan EX reaches at 70, 90 and 100 per cent of published range.
The broker’s view
Caravans hold value like property in a good suburb: utility demand is global and permanent, and supply of clean, damage-free airframes never meets it. History matters enormously — a corrosion-managed coastal or floatplane airframe is a different asset from a dry-climate one.
In East and Southern Africa the type is the backbone of the safari and charter economy; we know where the good ones are.
The family
The original short-body, delivered from 1985. Still favoured for floatplane and lighter utility work; smaller cabin, lower payload, and correspondingly gentler pricing.
The windowless FedEx freighters, the 208B stretched. They surface on the used market as pure cargo aircraft — high-cycle but professionally maintained, and priced well below passenger-configured airframes.
The stretched passenger aircraft from 1990, on the 675 shp PT6A-114A. The bulk of the used fleet; capable everywhere except heavy, hot and high, where the engine runs out of answers.
From 2013, on the 867 shp PT6A-140: climb improved by roughly a third, transforming hot-and-high performance. The version to buy for African operations, and the one that holds its premium.
Common questions
Up to 14 occupants in commuter configuration (regulatory limits vary by state); executive and combi layouts trade seats for comfort or cargo.
Published maximum range is around 912 NM; typical utility sectors run one to two hours, where the type's economics are unbeatable.
Fixed rugged gear, huge cargo capability, short unpaved-strip performance and PT6 reliability — plus operating costs that make single-engine sense on thin routes.
Yes — amphibious float installations are approved for the type, and the Caravan family has a long seaplane pedigree, particularly in the Maldives and Canada. Floatplane history matters at purchase: saltwater operation demands a properly documented corrosion-management record before an airframe is worth strong money.
The Kodiak takes off shorter and climbs steeply — a genuine STOL design. The Caravan answers with a larger cabin, higher payload, and a global parts and engineering network the Kodiak cannot match. For commercial operators, especially in Africa, fleet support usually decides it.
Published takeoff over a 50 ft obstacle is around 2,100 ft at maximum weight, on dirt, gravel or grass — the fixed undercarriage is built for it. Real-world operators plan conservatively for heat, altitude and surface, but few working strips in Africa are beyond the type.
Buying or selling, the conversation costs nothing. Tell us the mission and the budget and we will tell you honestly whether the Grand Caravan EX — or something else — is the right airframe for it.
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