Ferried to Australia as N1754, VH-TGT was registered to TAA in April
1968. It was a replace-
ment aircraft for c/n 9, which had been earmarked to become VH-TGT
after serving as DHC’s
Twin Otter demonstrator for a year in full TAA mainland colours
and the registration CF-UXE.
TAA
opted to take a new aircraft, allowing DHC agent Hawker de Havilland to
offer c/n 9 for
early
delivery to Air Caledonie, which registered it
F-OCFJ in January
1968. (I sighted c/n 9
at Faa'a Airport in Tahiti in 1978). The real -TGT didn’t
have an auspicious start. Assigned
to TAA’s Mackay base, it crashed on landing at Brampton Island on
November 1, 1968 and
was off the register until March 1969, when it was restored as a Twin
Otter 200 with an enlarged
nose cargo compartment. It returned to Mackay where was seen in
the CAHS archive photo
above receiving maintenance in the not-so-state-of-the-art hangar later
used by Air Queensland.
TAA withdrew the aircraft from use in
January 1974 and stored it at Eagle Farm. In May 1975
it
was sold to Talair and ferried to Papua New Guinea where it became
P2-TGT. At the begin-
ning of the following year it was reregistered P2-RDE. The Twin Otter
was tragically lost in a
fatal crash near Garaina on
February 28, 1978. The pilot perished, although the one
passenger
survived.