World's Oldest Active Dash 8 Leaves Australia for Canada After De Havilland Purchase

De Havilland has bought the world's oldest active Dash 8 and is ferrying it from Australia to Canada to preserve the airframe. The 42.5-year-old aircraft, C-FMQA (msn 004), departed Cairns (CNS) on October 9 for St. Thomas Municipal Airport (YQS) in Ontario. The ferry flight is expected to take eight days with 16 intermediate stops, covering almost 23,900 kilometres in around 40 hours of flying time.

The DHC-8-100 began flying in Australia in 1988, initially for Eastern Australia Airlines, and has remained in the region since, operating for QantasLink, Air PNG and, most recently, Skytrans Australia as VH-QQB. Skytrans retired the aircraft in July 2026 and shortly afterwards sold it to Cairns-based aircraft brokerage Air Pursuits. After Air Pursuits on-sold it to De Havilland, it was removed from the Australian register earlier this month and registered in Canada as C-FMQA. It will join the DHC Heritage Fleet in Ontario, having operated over 61,500 cycles.

Its departure leaves Skytrans with three DHC-8-100s, two of them more than 40 years old, used for scheduled passenger services and closed charter flights. Skytrans has effectively replaced it with another DHC-8-100, VH-QQU (msn 135), acquired on lease from Castlelake in mid-2026. The former PNG Air aircraft is at Cairns but has not yet entered service and does not yet wear Skytrans branding.

Air Pursuits has since signed letters of intent to buy three more Dash 8s. Two are a nearly 28-year-old DHC-8-Q300 last operated by CommutAir as N192PF (msn 192) and a 35-year-old DHC-8-100 last operated by Frontera Flight Holdings as N807EX (msn 292); the company plans to part out both for spares.

The third is a 35-year-old DHC-8-100 with Mexico's Aeroservicios de la Costa, which operates it on behalf of Aeronaves TSM, although flight-tracking sites indicate it is not in active service. Air Pursuits said it intends to keep that aircraft flying and work to return it to service.

The sequence from operator to broker to manufacturer shows how an airframe at the end of its airline career can still carry value in more than one way. Skytrans sold to a brokerage rather than going direct to a buyer, and the brokerage then split its follow-on Dash 8 purchases between aircraft destined for parts and one it wants flying again. For a segment built on ageing turboprops, spares supply and continued operation are competing uses for the same old airframes.

For the operator the effect is a fleet swap rather than a capacity change. Skytrans lost its oldest DHC-8-100 and has a leased replacement from Castlelake already at Cairns, so the practical question is when VH-QQU enters service and takes up Skytrans branding.

The near-term milestones are concrete: C-FMQA's arrival at St. Thomas after its eight-day, 16-stop ferry, and whether the letters of intent Air Pursuits has signed for the three further Dash 8s convert into completed purchases.