Gallery Update: Chasing a Beechcraft 1900 on Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas to you all! The holidays are usually the most hectic in terms of traffic and travel but one can often find a diamond in all that holiday travel chaos if you know where to look for it. For aviation enthusiasts, the perks about holiday air travel is all the equipment substitution airlines use in order to keep up with demand and peaks in passenger travel. Cargo carriers such as FedEx and UPS often up-gauges and even contracts and charters aircraft from lesser-known cargo carriers with big planes (such as Atlas Air and Centurion Air Cargo) in order to keep up with the rush. Even the regional cargo carriers with smaller planes (like Ameriflight) substitutes equipment and leases aircraft from other companies as well as directly from leasing companies to keep up with the holiday spikes of hauling freight. I've heard of some rare cargo carrier sightings up in PDX but haven't had the time to go see them for myself unfortunately. But all throughout this month, Ameriflight has been flying a Beechcraft 1900 on cargo runs into Salem almost on a daily basis most likely due to it being the holidays. Since 1900s have become an uncommon sight in many parts of the continental U.S., I made it a point to make the short drive out to Salem-McNary Field to see this Beech 1900 myself.

Here's the link:

Salem (SLE) 8

Here's a preview:

Bell 206B (N316CF) parked on the ramp.

At first, I thought Ameriflight was utilizing one of their Beech 1900Cs but much to my surprise it was this leased 1900D. This Beech 1900D (N105EV) is owned by Erickson Incorporated, based in Portland, OR. After doing a little research, this particular airframe is serial number c/n UE-64, which actually has been all over the world as a Raytheon demonstrator aircraft once registered as N1900R and nicknamed the "Missionator" on a world tour back 2009. While I have yet to photograph a 1900C in ideal conditions, I'm glad I caught a 1900D as well because I haven't seen one up close before.

Once again, I got some prop blur!

Just after powering down. It was actually lighter than what the photos show. In order to achieve prop blur, the photos actually darkened... Something else to learn about my DSLR camera, which I have been using for a about a year now!

Front profile view of the 1900D. Even though it's cargo-only, it looks like a passenger variant with the windows so I thought that was pretty neat to see.

Face-to-face with the 1900D. The 1900D was designed to resolve a problem with passenger experience in the original 1900 and 1900C aircraft. The 1900D fuselage is designed so that the average passengers would be able to stand up straight while walking the aisle, something that the original and 1900C fuselage was not designed to allow.