Can someone give me a good definition of a Bush Plane?!?!?

Question

its not on dictionary.com or in the dictionary

Answer 1

C-206.......................

Answer 2

Can land on unimproved runways, in winter can be fitted with skis, floats if needed. This usually means tough landing gear with balloon tires, good short field performance. The best example I know of is the Beaver.

Answer 3

"Bush planes" are usually thought of as small, rugged airplanes capable of flying in and out of short, poorly surfaced airstrips in remote places (the "bush").  They are usually tail wheel airplanes, and some of them are quite old.  The DeHavilland Beaver is one example that comes to mind.

Other typical bush planes are the Cessna 180 and 185, the Helio-Courier, the Pilatus Heli-Porter, Cessna Caravan, Piper Cherokee Six, or Stinson Station Wagon or L-19.

Some bush planes are or can be fitted with floats or skis for getting in and out of places not otherwise accessible.

On the other hand, we often called our Douglas C-118 (cargo version of a DC-6) a "bush plane" when we flew it in and out of short, unimproved airstrips.  It has a wingspan of 117-1/2 ft and could carry about 45,000 lbs of whatever somebody thought they needed.  So not all bush planes are small.  But they are all rugged and they are all flown by sort of crazy hippies like I once was.

Answer 4

They are small aircraft usually used to fly into uninhabited or barely habited areas.  Thousands of them in Canada because of the size of the Country compared to the population.  The planes are usually equipped to land on water as well as land.  Because we had so many bush pilots here when WWII broke out we ended up training most of the Allied air forces.  The town I live in still has part of it's WWII training base and is now training Chinese pilots.

Answer 5

The typical bush plane is a small single engined aircraft that can carry between 2 and 10 people or cargo in and out of short, unimproved landing strips, lakes, frozen lakes, or glaciers.

Perhaps the most famous bush plane is the deHavilland Beaver which pioneered the use of STOL (short takeoff and landing) technology in a decent sized aircraft.  Other good bush planes are the Super Cub, the Maule, the deHavilland Twin Otter, and the Pilatus Porter.

However there are many different types of bush planes and many different aircraft that serve (with varying degrees of success) as bush aircraft.  For example the 737-200 passenger jet can be equipped with a gravel kit to be operated off of unpaved runways.  The deHavilland Caribou is a large twin engined cargo plane that can takeoff and land in an area as small as a baseball diamond.

Mission Aviation Fellowship is probably one of the best known bush operators in the world and they fly off of jungle strips built onto the sides of mountains in a Cessna 206; a plane that wasn't designed specifically as a bush plane but when suitably modified (with a STOL kit and big tires) does an excellent job.