Overnight-package carriers FedEx, UPS and Airborne Express use big jets to move cargo between major hubs and rely on smaller piston and turboprop airplanes, such as the Cessna Caravan, to service outlying airports. Packages, which are shipped in containers on the cargo jets, must be removed from the containers and placed on pallets for loading into the smaller airplanes. If this step could be avoided, time would be saved–a package-carrier goal stressed quite emphatically by Tom Hanks’ character in the opening scene of the movie Cast Away. If only there were a small airplane that had a fuselage big enough to carry containers.
Such thinking was behind the ill-fated Ayres Loadmaster (for which FedEx had placed orders, but which now has a highly dubious future), the AeroCourier and American Utilicraft FF-1080 (both looking for financing) and a new design being promoted by a tiny startup company in Zephyrhills, Fla. Atlas Aerospace is affiliated with Aviation Instrument Technologies Inc. (AITI), a four-year-old company that designs and develops instruments for aircraft and flight simulators. It was founded last summer by AITI-owner David Teichman, who has employed Jim Stewart, an aviation veteran with more than 50 years of design work under his belt. Stewart, whose major claim to fame is the Stewart S-51 Mustang kitplane (a 70-percent-scale P-51 Mustang), designed the Atlas Aerospace Liftmaster.
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